Once the API is released, it is difficult to make changes, so, you should get it right in the first time as much as possible. The API development companies like Matrix Marketers are looking forward to the standardization in API development and implementation.

In designing an API, we have come across many issues with what should be the minimum lines of code of an API? How should you authenticate API? How to update and so on? In this post, Matrix Marketers developers will be elaborating on all these issues.

Key requirements for the API

Most of the Apis available on the web talk about the ideal conditions and discuss the theoretical implementation of the API. Our aim in this post is to elaborate on some practical points which can help you build better APIs. Some of the major requirements in establishing an API based application are:

• web standards should be placed in a sensible way
• It has to be developer friendly and explorable via a browser address bar
• For a pleasant and easy adoption, It should be simple, intuitive and consistent.
• The API should have UI functionality and flexibility for the user.
• The API ability to communicate with another APIs count.
• The API must have enough scope to provide and support better UX.

Use RESTful URLs and actions

Over a period of time, RESTful APIs have gained a wide adoption. The main method used in REST is to separate your API into logical resources. These resources are manipulated using HTTP requests where the method (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE) has the specific meaning.

Well, these are useful from the user’s point of view. The mapping should be done only Up to the level it is required to be done. The key here is to not leak irrelevant implementation details out to your API. Once you have your resources defined, you need to identify what actions apply to them and how those would map to your API. The CRUD actions can be handled using RESTful principles using HTTP methods mapped as follows:

The great thing about REST is that you’re leveraging existing HTTP methods to implement significant functionality on just a single endpoint. There is no method naming conventions to follow and the URL structure is clean & clear.

What about actions that don’t fit into the world of CRUD operations?

This is where things can get fuzzy. There are a number of approaches:

SSL everywhere – all the time

Always use SSL. No exceptions. Today, your web APIs can get accessed from anywhere there is the internet (like libraries, coffee shops, airports among others). Not all of these are secure.

Another advantage of always using SSL is that guaranteed encrypted communications simplify authentication efforts – you can get away with simple access tokens instead of having to sign each API request.

Documentation

An API is only as good as its documentation. Easy docs which are easily accessible and available are used. Most developers will check out the docs before attempting any integration effort. When the docs are hidden inside a PDF file or require signing in, they’re not only difficult to find but also not easy to search.

The docs should show examples of complete request/response cycles. The requests should be clearly stored by either storing browser information or links can be pasted into a terminal. GitHub and Stripe do a great job with this.

Versioning

Always version your API. Versioning helps you iterate faster and prevents invalid requests from hitting updated endpoints. It must support all API version transitions to continue to offer old API versions for a period of time.

There are mixed opinions around whether an API version should be included in the URL or in a header. Academically speaking, it should probably be in a header. However, the version needs to be in the URL to ensure browser exploitability of the resources across versions.

An API is never going to be completely stable. Change is inevitable. What’s important is how that change is managed. Well documented and announced multi-month depreciation schedules can be an acceptable practice for many APIs. It comes down to what is reasonable given the industry and possible consumers of the API.

Result filtering, sorting & searching

It’s best to keep the base resource URLs as lean as possible. Complex result filters, sorting requirements and advanced searching (when restricted to a single type of resource) can all be easily implemented as query parameters on top of the base URL. Let’s discuss this further:

Filtering: The filtering method is used to separate each field which has to be filtered. For example, when requesting a list of tickets from the /tickets endpoint, you may want to limit these to only those in the open state.

Sorting: This is a generic parameter sort to fix the sorting rules. Accommodate complex sorting requirements by letting the sort parameter take in the list of comma separated fields, each with a possible unary negative to imply descending sort order.

Searching: The filters aren’t sufficient and you full text is required for the full-text search. Perhaps you’re already using Elastic Search or another Lucene based search technology. When a full-text search is used as a mechanism of retrieving resource instances for a specific type of resource, it can be exposed in the API as a query parameter on the resource’s endpoint.

Authentication

A RESTful API should be stateless. The cookies or sessions are not responsible for authentication. Instead, each request should have its own authentication credentials.

By always using SSL, the authentication credentials can be simplified to a randomly generated access token that is delivered in the user name field of HTTP Basic Auth.

Conclusion:

An API is a user interface for developers. Our expert developers put their best efforts to ensure a practical and pleasant use of API. The minute testing of requirement and checking for authentication is always a plus. To implement APIs in your applications and get better business, you may contact Matrix Marketers !