Challenges When Using REST APIs

It’s also important to know that REST APIs come with specific challenges. The statelessness of REST can lead to larger requests since all necessary data must be included in each request. This also creates issues like data overfetching and underfetching, which can impact performance, as multiple requests may be needed to gather all data, or excessive data may be returned unnecessarily. Security concerns are a potential challenge, requiring proper implementation of authentication and data transfer security practices to keep data secure. Additionally, versioning of REST APIs can be complex, with changes potentially breaking backward compatibility. As REST APIs are scaled out, under high loads, REST APIs might experience performance bottlenecks due to HTTP/HTTPS overhead. Finally, the lack of a strict standard in REST implementation can lead to inconsistencies across different APIs.