REST API Best Practices

1. Use clear and consistent resource naming conventions.

Example : /customers, /orders, /shipment, /products

2. Use the right HTTP verbs.

Example : GET /customers, POST /shipment, PUT /products/{id}, DELETE /orders/{id}

3. Use HTTP status codes correctly.

Exapmle: 200 OK, 201 Created, 400 Bad Request, 404 Not Found, etc.

4. Offer thorough and understandable documentation for your API: Detailed API documentation with usage examples, parameter descriptions, and response formats.

5. Use versioning to keep track of API updates.

Example: /v1/orders, /v2/customers

6. Make your API stateless by design: Authenticate each request with an access token rather than relying on server-side sessions.

7. Use appropriate error handling.

Example: { "error": "Invalid request body" } with an appropriate HTTP status code.

8. Make use of the proper mechanisms for authentication and authorization: Implement OAuth 2.0 or JWT-based authentication and define roles/permissions for authorized users.

9. Put rate restriction and throttling into Practice: Allow a maximum of 100 requests per hour for a particular API endpoint per client.

10. Make use of caching techniques: Set appropriate Cache-Control and ETag headers for responses that can be cached.

11. Follow the principles of HATEOAS: Include resource links and URLs in API response for simple navigation and exploration.

12. Implement pagination strategies: To get specific subsets of data, use pagination with query parameters like page and limit.

13. Put input validation into practice: Verify the request payloads for the existence of necessary fields, data types, and data formats.

14.Design your API to be idempotent: Make sure that a single request has the same impact as any number of identical ones.

15. Use appropriate content types: For JSON payloads, set Content-Type: application/json, and for XML payloads, set Content-Type: application/xml.

16. Request/response compression should be used: When the client supports it, gzip encode the response payload to reduce its size.

17. Give users the ability to search, sort, and filter: Give users the option to search, sort, or filter results based on their query.

18. Ensure that API documentation is subjected to proper version control: Ensure that each API version has its own versioned documentation.?

19. Implement appropriate monitoring and logging: Keep track of performance data including API calls and problems. Install monitoring software to enable proactive issue identification.

20. Follow RESTful URI conventions: /users/id/orders is a good example of a hierarchical URI that represents resource relationships.