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
3
240
API Antipatterns
Everyone *knows* how to build an API. This document describes how to NOT build one.
Mike Pearce
March 26, 2012
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Mike Pearce
See All by Mike Pearce
Being Agile
mikepearce
9
4.6k
How Big Is It? A guide to agile estimation and planning
mikepearce
5
880
Effective User Stories
mikepearce
2
250
Thimbl
mikepearce
1
150
UX for Developers
mikepearce
2
320
The Shu Ha Ri of Agile
mikepearce
1
630
The Anatomical Dissection of a Sprint Backlog
mikepearce
1
280
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
Meshy Proプラン課金した
henjin0
0
210
Agile Leadership Summit Keynote 2026
m_seki
1
210
We Built for Predictability; The Workloads Didn’t Care
stahnma
0
130
データの整合性を保ちたいだけなんだ
shoheimitani
6
2.4k
Introduction to Sansan, inc / Sansan Global Development Center, Inc.
sansan33
PRO
0
3k
Databricks Free Edition講座 データサイエンス編
taka_aki
0
290
Amazon S3 Vectorsを使って資格勉強用AIエージェントを構築してみた
usanchuu
3
420
Deno・Bunの標準機能やElysiaJSを使ったWebSocketサーバー実装 / ラーメン屋を貸し切ってLT会! IoTLT 2026新年会
you
PRO
0
260
仕様書駆動AI開発の実践: Issue→Skill→PRテンプレで 再現性を作る
knishioka
2
540
コスト削減から「セキュリティと利便性」を担うプラットフォームへ
sansantech
PRO
3
1.1k
外部キー制約の知っておいて欲しいこと - RDBMSを正しく使うために必要なこと / FOREIGN KEY Night
soudai
PRO
11
4.2k
~Everything as Codeを諦めない~ 後からCDK
mu7889yoon
3
240
Featured
See All Featured
Understanding Cognitive Biases in Performance Measurement
bluesmoon
32
2.8k
Making Projects Easy
brettharned
120
6.6k
A Guide to Academic Writing Using Generative AI - A Workshop
ks91
PRO
0
190
How to optimise 3,500 product descriptions for ecommerce in one day using ChatGPT
katarinadahlin
PRO
0
3.4k
The Curious Case for Waylosing
cassininazir
0
230
Scaling GitHub
holman
464
140k
Balancing Empowerment & Direction
lara
5
880
ReactJS: Keep Simple. Everything can be a component!
pedronauck
666
130k
Reflections from 52 weeks, 52 projects
jeffersonlam
356
21k
Build your cross-platform service in a week with App Engine
jlugia
234
18k
The Director’s Chair: Orchestrating AI for Truly Effective Learning
tmiket
1
96
Technical Leadership for Architectural Decision Making
baasie
1
240
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!