Designing APIs
How to design HTTP APIs that clients can rely on: URLs, methods, status codes, errors, pagination, safe retries, auth, versioning, async work and webhooks. Grounded in the HTTP standard (RFC 9110).
10 lessons, 19 short cards, each card with one check question and an instant explanation. Then a 12-question test in 20 minutes, in the format of a real online assessment.
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Resources and URLs
Resources, not actions, Nesting and relationships
2 lessons -
Methods, safety and idempotency
What each method promises, PUT, PATCH or POST?
2 lessons -
Status codes
The status code families, The codes you'll actually use
2 lessons -
Request and response shape
Consistent JSON, One error format
2 lessons -
Pagination, filtering and sorting
Offset or cursor pagination, Filtering and sorting
2 lessons -
Retries, idempotency keys and concurrency
Idempotency keys: safe retries for POST, Lost updates, ETags and If-Match
2 lessons -
Authentication and authorization
Who is calling: keys and tokens, What they may do: scopes and ownership
2 lessons -
Versioning and compatibility
What breaks clients, Versions and deprecation
2 lessons -
Long operations and webhooks
202 Accepted and a status resource, Webhooks done right
2 lessons -
REST, GraphQL and gRPC
Three styles, three trade-offs
1 lesson
Practice: design the endpoints
Three systems: an online shop, a hotel booking API and a payments API. For each request, pick the method, the path and the status code, then check. Every wrong choice tells you why.
Start the practice →Final test: 12 questions in 20 minutes
Timed and linear: no going back. You get a full review with explanations at the end.
Go to the test →More in Divero School
