Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
API Antipatterns
Search
Mike Pearce
March 26, 2012
Technology
250
3
Share
Embed
Copy iframe code
Copy JS code
Copy link
Start on current slide
API Antipatterns
Everyone *knows* how to build an API. This document describes how to NOT build one.
Mike Pearce
March 26, 2012
More Decks by Mike Pearce
See All by Mike Pearce
Being Agile
mikepearce
9
4.7k
How Big Is It? A guide to agile estimation and planning
mikepearce
5
920
Effective User Stories
mikepearce
2
260
Thimbl
mikepearce
1
160
UX for Developers
mikepearce
2
340
The Shu Ha Ri of Agile
mikepearce
1
660
The Anatomical Dissection of a Sprint Backlog
mikepearce
1
320
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
「図書館」という名前のままでいいのか -Code4Lib JAPANカンファレンス2026 アンカンファレンス報告- / Code4Lib JAPAN Conference 2026: Unconference Report
ykiyota
0
110
振り返りこそエンジニアの本領
negima
0
340
全員がプロダクトへ向き合う組織を持続成長させるために——組織づくりのフライホイールと4象限 / The Flywheel Model and Four Quadrants for Organizational Design
hiro_torii
4
910
Driving AI Adoption Using In-House GPUs to Serve Qwen
po3rin
2
470
AIとペアプロを始める。人とのペアプロをやめる。ペアプロの良さを改めて知る。もっと好きになった。 / Rediscovering Pair Programming
honyanya
1
290
Deploying a Full-Stack Bun-Native Framework on Cloudflare Workers
7nohe
0
110
AI 駆動 Terraform 開発/SRE_BizReach_MIXI_2
visional_engineering_and_design
3
1.9k
GoにおけるFFIのこれまでとこれから
goccy
4
1k
omasushiというライブラリを作った
polidog
PRO
0
150
V8コントリビュート超入門
riyaamemiya
0
150
Azure App Service / Container Apps の組み込み認証
kuniteru
0
210
ブラウザアプリの継続的パフォーマンスモニタリング (序) / Continuous Browser Application Performance Monitoring; Act 1
moznion
0
110
Featured
See All Featured
Performance Is Good for Brains [We Love Speed 2024]
tammyeverts
12
1.8k
Building Flexible Design Systems
yeseniaperezcruz
330
41k
職位にかかわらず全員がリーダーシップを発揮するチーム作り / Building a team where everyone can demonstrate leadership regardless of position
madoxten
69
65k
How to optimise 3,500 product descriptions for ecommerce in one day using ChatGPT
katarinadahlin
PRO
2
3.8k
Amusing Abliteration
ianozsvald
1
290
Rebuilding a faster, lazier Slack
samanthasiow
85
9.6k
Effective software design: The role of men in debugging patriarchy in IT @ Voxxed Days AMS
baasie
0
510
Ruling the World: When Life Gets Gamed
codingconduct
0
330
Evolving SEO for Evolving Search Engines
ryanjones
0
280
The Organizational Zoo: Understanding Human Behavior Agility Through Metaphoric Constructive Conversations (based on the works of Arthur Shelley, Ph.D)
kimpetersen
PRO
0
440
Discover your Explorer Soul
emna__ayadi
2
1.3k
世界の人気アプリ100個を分析して見えたペイウォール設計の心得
akihiro_kokubo
PRO
74
42k
Transcript
API Anti Patterns or, how to not f**k up your
API
API Anti Patterns or, how to not f**k up your
API
or, tips on how to annoy your API consumers
or, think you know REST? Awesome!
or, some of the crazy s**t people do with REST
Hello
Mike Pearce
http://social-network.com /MikePearce
http://social-network.com /MikeyPearce
http://social-network.com /mikepearce.net
http://social-network.com /MikePearce
An Apology
SONISPHERE @ Knebworth Flags should be banned a festivals!
Burritos: Best. Festival. Food. Ever.
None
Mike, Lee and Rog
SORRY
( ) HTTP REQUEST: That you get on with it...
Why am I here? REST
Why am I here? REST
Why am I here? REST Hah!
Why am I here? REST Huh?! ST
Do’s ✔
Do’s Dont’s ✔ ✘
Do’s Dont’s Whatevs.. ✔ ✘ ☠
But first... Some background
Who? Roy Fielding (the grandfather)
There!
Architectural Styles and the Design of Network- based Software Architectures
Can’t sleep? Read this...
None
A quick primer And now ...
REST != HTTP
REST != HTTP REST != The Web
REST
REST IS NOT
REST IS NOT HARD
REST IS NOT HARD Seriously!
Standards? We don’t need no steenkin’ standards!
MY CONSTRAINTS, LET ME SHOW YOU THEM
Some verbs...
Some nouns...
GET
PINT
PINT Please!
ANTI patterns Onto the main event
Overuse of ...
GET
None
Overuse of GET and POST or, GET/POST tunnelling.
None
None
BAD http://api.flickr.com/services/ rest/?method= flickr.photos.people.add &api_key=nnn&photo_id=yyy&u ser_id=xxx GET:
PUT: /user/MikePearce api_key=moo& age=33& size=medium& power=flight GOOD
PUT or POST? ASIDE PUT: /users/MikePearce PUT: /links/google PUT: /articles/100805/putorpost
PUT or POST? ASIDE POST: /documents/save name=styleguide.css& category=design
PUT or POST? ASIDE PUT when the resource will live
at the target URI POST when you want the server to handle the location of the resource.
POST: /dostuff/ user=MikePearce& action=delete& api_key=moo& token=quack& mode=3 BAD
GOOD DELETE: /user/MikePearce Wait! What? Why!?
Tunneling Errors through 200 OK?
Are you OK? I’m fine! Great! A 200 OK!
I’m fine! Are you OK? ARGGHH! He doesn’t understand me!
Great! A 200 OK!
This is better...
GET: /droid/r2d2 GET: /droid/c3po 404: Not the droids you’re looking
for
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/plain <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <response
code="error"> <error>Error!</error> <text>You have errored.</text> </response> What am I supposed to do with this?
RESPONSE CODES Which leads me nicely to...
IE has failed Informational
Success FTW!1
Redirection
Client Error (you try illustrating client error!)
Server Error It’s 1am. I can’t find an image for
server error.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK PUT: /user/MikePearce Meh..
HTTP/1.1 201 CREATED PUT: /user/MikePearce Huzzah!
HTTP/1.1 418 GET: /whatareyou
HTTP/1.1 418 I’m a teapot GET: /whatareyou This one is
real1!!
Caching
None
E-Tags
HTTP/1.1 304 NOT MODIFIED HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 23
May 2005 22:38:34 GMT Last-Modified: Wed, 08 Jan 2003 23:11:55 Etag: "3f80f-1b6-3e1cb03b" Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Mmm ... Delicious!
NO
HYPERMEDIA
HYPERMEDIA What is it?
HYPERMEDIA What is it?
HYPERMEDIA AS THE ENGINE OF APPLICATION STATE
oar...
HATEOAS (Remember hating oars)
Grey Areas
V3r510n1ng Versioning
GET: /user/MikePearce Him again. Prolific bastard.
GET: /user/MikePearce GET: /user/66
GET: /v1/user/MikePearce 1. Versioning with the URI GET: /v2/user/66
GET: /user/66 2. Not versioning the primary URI GET: /v1/user/MikePearce
GET: /user/66 3. No versioning
Document Extensions
Either
Either GET: /reports/tpsreport/summary.json GET: /reports/tpsreport/summary.xml
Either GET: /reports/tpsreport/summary.json GET: /reports/tpsreport/summary.xml or
Either GET: /reports/tpsreport/summary.json GET: /reports/tpsreport/summary.xml or Accept: text/xml Accept: application/json
SUM MARY Phew!
Overuse of GET and POST or, GET/POST tunnelling.
Tunneling Errors through 200 OK?
RESPONSE CODES Which leads me nicely to...
E-Tags
NO
HATEOAS (Remember hating oars)
V3r510n1ng Versioning
Either GET: /reports/tpsreport/summary.json GET: /reports/tpsreport/summary.xml or Accept: text/xml Accept: application/json
Any questions? (that I can answer!)
Photo Credits Wordle.net flickr.com/photos/wouterkiel/3717057757/ - Wouter Kiel flickr.com/photos/joe_13/19946186/ - joe_13
flickr.com/photos/23846880@N00/391925649/ - Rutger de Moddertukker flickr.com/photos/mararie/264942105/ - mararie flickr.com/photos/ndanger/7841795/ - ndanger flickr.com/photos/yourdon/2573762303/ - Ed Yourdon flickr.com/photos/thunderchild5/225675773/ - Thunderchild7 flickr.com/photos/duchamp/126115989/ - Duchamp flickr.com/photos/thefangmonster/490423135/ - The fang monster flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/2894328425/ - cliff1066 flickr.com/photos/epsos/4582789354/ - epSos.de flickr.com/photos/projector/2092517108/ - allie pasquier flickr.com/photos/nickstone333/3135320160/ - nickstone333 flickr.com/photos/rdrcollection/116454033/ - Rodney Ramsey flickr.com/photos/christophercarfi/2730304130/ - Christophercarfi flickr.com/photos/turatti/4526352835/ - jaci xIII
Mike Pearce
[email protected]
mikepearce.net twtitter.com/mikepearce Thanks!