Category: 3. Rest API

With that, we have covered the basics of building a REST API. In this post, we used Node.js and Express to build some simple endpoints that can be expanded. Overall, the above code gives a good place to start when building out APIs for your applications. Once you’ve built your APIs, you’ll likely want to…

Building an API is only the start. Once your API endpoint is created, you’ll want to ensure that you monitor and analyze incoming traffic in addition to your API testing tool. Doing this lets you identify potential issues and security flaws and determine how your API design is used. These can all be crucial aspects…

Now that we’ve reviewed all of the basics of what a REST API is and other fundamentals, it’s time to build one out. The example below shows a straightforward example of how to implement a REST API with NodeJS and Express. No actual CRUD operations are being done within the endpoints, but you can use…

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…

REST APIs are known for their simplicity and flexibility, leveraging standard HTTP methods that are universally understood and easy to use. This universal approach to web communication allows for platform independence, making REST APIs compatible across different systems and languages. One of their key strengths is scalability, thanks to their stateless nature, which simplifies the server architecture by…

Most developers are familiar with HTTP verbs/methods. Because of this, understanding REST API methods is quite simple to wrap your head around. REST APIs use the standard HTTP methods that developers (and most technical people) already know. With REST, each method is intended to perform specific functions: Each method corresponds to the CRUD (Create, Read,…

REST APIs are built around six fundamental principles, some of which we have already touched on. Let’s take a closer look at each of the six principles below.

Many different types of APIs are available; however, RESTful APIs have become the go-to technology for almost every API in production today. This is not by chance but due to the simplicity and scalability of implementing and supporting REST technologies. The sheer amount of frameworks and technologies available to develop and support REST APIs alone…

A REST (Representational State Transfer) API is a mechanism that allows different software applications to communicate with each other over the internet or local network. REST APIs follow specific rules and standards that enable applications and users to use HTTP requests to access and use data. The data sent and received by a REST API…

When building APIs, a RESTful API is one of the most common types of API to build. As with any technology, REST APIs can be built to serve straightforward use cases or be augmented to accommodate your most complex tasks. Regardless of what you are building, you’ve come here to figure out how to build…