Rest API naming conventions and best Practices.
RESTful API (Representational State Transfer) are building blocks of communication between various components of a system. It also extends to communication between a system with another system. An alternative to this is the SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol). The main difference between them being one is focused on Architecture(REST) and the other is a basic protocol(SOAP).
Below are some more differences;
Design- SOAP API exposes functions or operations while REST are data driven.
Flexibility- SOAP API are rigid and only allow XML messaging between applications. This means that the application server has to maintain the state of each client and has to remember all the previous requests when processing new requests.
Performance- SOAP messages are larger and more complex, which makes them slower to transmit and process.This can increase the page loading times. REST is faster and more efficient due to smaller message sizes of the REST which are cacheable. This way the server can store frequently accessed data in a cache for even shorter load times.
Scalability- SOAP protocol requires applications to store state between requests which increases the bandwidth and memory requirements. This makes the application expensive and challenging to scale. REST is stateless and layered. This means that they are more scalable. For example, the application server can pass the request to other servers or allow an intermediary (like a content delivery network) to handle it.
Security- SOAP requires additional layer of WS-Security to work with HTTPS. WS-Security uses additional overheads content to ensure only the designated process in the designated server reads the SOAP message content. This adds communication overheads and negatively impacts the performance. REST supports HTTPS without additional overheads.
Reliability- SOAP has error handling logic built into it and this provides more reliability. REST is less reliable as it relies on continuously trying after failure.
That said, below are the best practices and naming conventions for REST API.
Represent resources with plural nouns (e.g., /users instead of /user).
Keep URIs simple, intuitive, and easy to understand, avoiding unnecessary complexity.
Use HTTP methods appropriately for operations (e.g POST for creation, GET for reading, PUT/PATCH for updating, DELETE for deletion).
Choose and stick to a consistent casing convention (camelCase, snake_case, kebab-case) throughout the API.
Use pronouns to represent resources, avoiding verb usages in URIs( e.g prefer /orders than /getOrders).
Include API versioning in URIs to manage changes over time(e.g /v1/users/).
Use hyphens for readability in a multi-word resource names (e.g., /product-categories).
Avoid sensitive information in URIs, use secure protocols (HTTPS), and implement proper authentication mechanisms.
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