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
データの整合性を保ちたいだけなんだ
shoheimitani
8
3.1k
SREじゃなかった僕らがenablingを通じて「SRE実践者」になるまでのリアル / SRE Kaigi 2026
aeonpeople
6
2.3k
Bedrock PolicyでAmazon Bedrock Guardrails利用を強制してみた
yuu551
0
210
usermode linux without MMU - fosdem2026 kernel devroom
thehajime
0
230
広告の効果検証を題材にした因果推論の精度検証について
zozotech
PRO
0
170
クレジットカード決済基盤を支えるSRE - 厳格な監査とSRE運用の両立 (SRE Kaigi 2026)
capytan
6
2.7k
We Built for Predictability; The Workloads Didn’t Care
stahnma
0
140
Contract One Engineering Unit 紹介資料
sansan33
PRO
0
13k
10Xにおける品質保証活動の全体像と改善 #no_more_wait_for_test
nihonbuson
PRO
2
240
OCI Database Management サービス詳細
oracle4engineer
PRO
1
7.4k
生成AIを活用した音声文字起こしシステムの2つの構築パターンについて
miu_crescent
PRO
2
190
Kiro IDEのドキュメントを全部読んだので地味だけどちょっと嬉しい機能を紹介する
khmoryz
0
180
Featured
See All Featured
Bootstrapping a Software Product
garrettdimon
PRO
307
120k
The Psychology of Web Performance [Beyond Tellerrand 2023]
tammyeverts
49
3.3k
Have SEOs Ruined the Internet? - User Awareness of SEO in 2025
akashhashmi
0
270
WCS-LA-2024
lcolladotor
0
450
Leveraging LLMs for student feedback in introductory data science courses - posit::conf(2025)
minecr
0
140
Bioeconomy Workshop: Dr. Julius Ecuru, Opportunities for a Bioeconomy in West Africa
akademiya2063
PRO
1
54
From π to Pie charts
rasagy
0
120
Measuring Dark Social's Impact On Conversion and Attribution
stephenakadiri
1
120
Self-Hosted WebAssembly Runtime for Runtime-Neutral Checkpoint/Restore in Edge–Cloud Continuum
chikuwait
0
320
StorybookのUI Testing Handbookを読んだ
zakiyama
31
6.6k
Neural Spatial Audio Processing for Sound Field Analysis and Control
skoyamalab
0
170
The Web Performance Landscape in 2024 [PerfNow 2024]
tammyeverts
12
1k
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!