REST API Design
Resource modeling, reliability patterns, versioning, and production essentials
Review REST API design interview questions covering resource naming, HTTP methods and status codes, versioning strategies, pagination, idempotency, authentication, and API best practices. Each question includes design rationale and real-world examples.
Fundamentals3 topics
REST Principles
Design HTTP APIs around resources and uniform verbs — predictable, cacheable, and easy to consume.
HTTP Status Codes
Use the right status code so clients (and humans, caches, load balancers) know exactly what happened.
Resource Modeling
Find the right granularity for resources — neither so fine that clients make 50 calls, nor so coarse that updates are clumsy.
Reliability3 topics
Idempotency
Make POST and other "non-idempotent" operations safe to retry by accepting an idempotency key from the client.
Pagination
Return list endpoints in chunks so clients can scroll without overwhelming the server or the network.
Rate Limiting & Retries
Protect the service from runaway clients via rate limits, and help well-behaved clients back off via standard headers.
Evolution3 topics
API Versioning
Evolve the API without breaking existing clients by versioning the contract.
Backward Compatibility
Ship API improvements without breaking existing clients — by being a strict producer and a lenient consumer.
Deprecation Strategy
Retire old APIs and fields safely — with clear signals, telemetry, and a deadline.
Production3 topics
Error Response Envelopes
Return errors in a single consistent shape so clients can handle them generically — instead of guessing what each endpoint returns.
Authentication & Authorization
Authenticate the caller (who they are) and authorize them (what they can do) before serving any non-public endpoint.
OpenAPI & Documentation
Describe your API once in OpenAPI (formerly Swagger) — get docs, client SDKs, request validators, and contract tests for free.