APIs: Non negotiables

When it comes to developing APIs, some aspects of the development can be influenced by different factors. The langauge or the framework or the libraries that you or your organization prefers are choices that you get to make. However, there are other important components that don’t change much. Hence the topic non negotiables. Let’s see them one by one.

Following REST API Principles:

REST APIs are the most common of all APIs in the world, it is the most commonly adapted standard. There are other alternatives like GraphQL and gRPC but in this article we will focus mainly on REST APIs.

Along with REST API, comes the standard for describing the REST APIs, which is OpenAPI Specification (OAS). OAS lays down few ways to structure the documentation in a way that can be easily understood and used by fellow developers. Swagger and redoc are are tools that provide interfaces for OAS so that the developers can test it using the interface itself. Swagger is not OAS. Swagger uses an OAS to show the documentation.

Basics of REST APIs:

All REST APIs follow a similar pattern in the URLs.