The Right Way To Build REST APIs

Best Practices for building REST APIs.
💬 Topics:
1. Richardson Maturity Model;
2. Stateless vs Stateful APIs;
3. Define correct REST Endpoints;
4. REST Endpoints responses;
5. Plain Text vs JSON vs XML vs YAML;
6. Handling exceptions in APIs;
7. REST API versioning;
8. HATEOAS
9. The HTTP protocol;
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[@RoelCagantas]

Poor Fireship clone.

[@omergatenio6802]

Yeah, you're right. It's really unfortunate that we receive a well explained top-notch content in a format similar to Fireship. What a disgrace!

[@dotnetapp]

pin of shame

[@RazoBeckett.]

@@dotnetapp ya lol

[@2u841r]

Poor rest-api concept clone. Poor Talking with English language clone. Poor Breathing Clone. Poor Living on the earth Clone.

[@ChichaGad]

@RoelCagantas someone's mad

[@vexxxG]

Personal opinion: a restful endpoint should be /api/orders/123/items?status=active or something along those lines. The path should only refer to resources by name or identifier, since active items returns a subset of a specific resource it should be used in the query string since it is a filter. Also, according to the spec, PUT is for upserting not only updating. PATCH is for updates only

[@ptinosq]

Not a personal opinion - that's the industry standard 😅

[@Blast-Forward]

Why does it have to be /api/... though?

[@vexxxG]

@@Blast-Forward it doesn't have to be... But it is kind of the golden standard... If you have an app that has both a UI and an API, usually you use /api because it's clearer for both developers and the server to route requests to a particular server/resource/location... Usually I have a standalone Spa and a standalone api (or more than one) and I have a reverse proxy in front... /api always goes to the api server while everything else false under the SPA

[@Blast-Forward]

@@vexxxG If there is only one client that fits well. Otherwise it can also be a subdomain.

[@bitsofdevbrain]

Perfect, that's for saying.

[@lucaruana9404]

I've been trying to learn API dev for a while now and this is the simplest and most crystal-clear video I've ever stumbled upon. Thanks a lot!

[@awesome-coding]

Glad it helped! Thanks for the feedback!

[@cslearn3044]

I recently quit web dev but i still come here watching cuz its interesting, and to like

[@awesome-coding]

Thank you! Why did you quit web dev?

[@cslearn3044]

@@awesome-coding no creativity, or you follow a specific path or your site will be bad, so yeah

[@Hardware-pm6uf]

​@@cslearn3044 what do you mean by creativity ? Web dev isn't creative

[@Serizon_]

@@cslearn3044 there are a 1000 specific paths , so generally people just use what they like.

[@bhumit070]

@@cslearn3044so what are you doing/pursuing now?

[@br3nto]

7:08 RESTful APIs can return HTML too! Like HTMX suggests, there is nothing more HATETOAS than HTML with its natural support for links and forms etc

[@peterszarvas94]

9:55 "no accepted standard' literally HTML is the standard

[@Blast-Forward]

How would you consume that with client-side rendering? Pick the URLs from the HTML? Then why return HTML in the first place? Just for the sake of being RESTful?

[@br3nto]

@@Blast-Forward the browser just renders the HTML… like what HTMX does, or Turbo, or the Laravel equivalent, you just swap out part of the page with the new content.

[@Blast-Forward]

@@br3nto But that's not feasible with SPA frameworks. Also, it couples the visual representation, at least the structure, to the underlying data.

[@fadhilinjagi1090]

The classical music in the background was soothing. The content was useful, thanks for sharing.

[@MarcoDamaceno]

HATEOAS maturity can be achieved by returning HTML instead of JSON. Then the client can parse the response or pick a part that is interesting like the url for example.

[@shashankthapa659]

just building a app based on sessions and ur rest api video is recommended. absolut legend

[@jaimieomondi1449]

The only words that i have heard today that make sense have come from this video...Greatly appreciated.

[@awesome-coding]

Wow, thank you!

[@charliesta.abc123]

Awesome, thanks! I thought you were gonna squeeze it into a 3 minute video but I was pleasantly surprised to see it go on until I checked the video length 😅

[@awesome-coding]

Glad you liked it! I'm planning to shift more towards the 10 minute format.

[@koenv85]

My preference would be to have a query parameter of status = active instead of putting active in the URL

[@awesome-coding]

That's fair - a valid alternative.

[@bone_broth_000]

Great video. Just note REST isn’t the *only* option. RPCs can be great for internal API calls

[@awesome-coding]

You just guessed what one of my next videos will be about :D

[@acopier]

also GraphQL

[@axMf3qTI]

You know what drives me crazy. websites that serve a 404 page with a 200 status code. What are you doing with your life?

[@GraphiteSC]

Are those sites built with a framework or library like React? For SPA’s, the router is responsible for rendering your app, nothing else, and without it your app won’t be found/initiated/rendered. Netlify, Nginx, Vercel etc. all need to defer that 404 responsibility (all routing responsibility), to the SPA’s router - and the only way to do that, is to tell the service to always return a 200, and redirect to your project’s entry point (index) so the router can load and do its thing.

[@Dipj01]

A REST API typically doesn't return a "page". The 404 page that you see is given from the spa framework itself if your requested path doesn't match one of its predefined paths/patterns. If you make that request through Postman, you'll still likely get the 404 status in response.

[@GraphiteSC]

@@Dipj01 Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. His condition can only happen on the front-end, with a SPA - and there’s a reason why that I was trying to explain.

[@axMf3qTI]

@@Dipj01 Oh you mean because this video talks about APIs. I meant when there is no API and you have to scrape a little for example. Would be nice if things work how they are designed to work.

[@em9999999]

The representation of backend and frontend developers is spot on

[@ChichaGad]

This was so clear and on point Next, please do GraphQL

[@awesome-coding]

Thank you!

[@ChichaGad]

​@@awesome-codingGood luck! ❤

[@TheDeluxeman]

Відмінне пояснення і анімація. Заслуговуєш на більше підписників!

[@awesome-coding]

Thank you!

[@mikec64]

Fantastic. Concise, useful illustrations, and I like the way you built the concepts up layer by layer. I'm a new subscriber.

[@awesome-coding]

Thank you!

[@maguilecutty]

Awesome content! The knit pickers here can jump in a lake. It’s so hard to find actual production grade info like this! Chapeau 😊

[@awesome-coding]

Thank you!

[@SuperKavv]

Great video! Really clear explanation.

[@awesome-coding]

Glad it was helpful!

[@louispetrik7431]

So much value in this video, amazing!

[@jeremysollars5922]

Your description of HATEOAS is unfortunately flawed. It shouldn't return JSON but should opt purely for HTML. In reality this is the true definition of REstful, html is restful, json isnt. Somehow this got lost in the sauce.

[@sinamobasheri]

The Hub 🥃 lol

[@awesome-coding]

Well they have millions of visits each month so it must be up there, right? :))

[@n8o_]

HTMX was made with the goal of extended HTML to be a complete hypermedia. It abides by the HATEOAS model, and is a simple and effective way to put it into action

[@wotwithbert7591]

HATEOAS should ultimately return hypermedia, not JSON that has to still be parsed on the client (with some additional logic being applied to the data being returned from the server, in some cases (especially on big tech projects)). Ultimately I believe that not responding with a pure declarative HTML response results in most REST APIs being more REST-like, than RESTful. Am I wrong to assume that?

[@JustMax97]

Would be interesting to see a video on event-driven architecture as well 🙏

[@awesome-coding]

Great suggestion! Will plan for something!

[@bobDotJS]

It took me 4 years of trial and error, and working with teams to absorb all of this knowledge through osmosis.

[@AleksandarIvanov69]

Great lesson! Thank you.

[@awesome-coding]

Glad you liked it!

[@uwitondanishema]

This is the best REST api video on youtube!

[@awesome-coding]

Thank you!

[@oogway_hussein]

thank you, keep up the high quality content

[@awesome-coding]

Thanks, will do!

[@erroneousbee]

I like the way dealing with state was just handwaved away. Also very much enjoyed the skewer-case, cos using snake_case maps too easily to js varnames.

[@debadipti]

Simply Awesome!

[@awesome-coding]

Glad you like it!

[@vpetryniak]

I wonder how to get a job at “The Hub” company

[@awesome-coding]

You need to really know the product first.

[@novo99]

I like to send 404 instead of 403 because I believe that the client should only be aware of resource that they have access to and 403 shows that the resource exists.

[@awesome-coding]

Yes and no:D I understand the benefit of the added security, but think about this scenario: You are working with a 3rd party API and somehow you have your credentials wrong. You make the request and a 404 Not Found is returned. You go back to the documentation and double check the URL. Make the call again - 404 again. It's more likely to thing that there is a bug in the API / documentation than an authentication issue on your part.

[@biovawan]

Great video! Thank you! Could you please make a video describing hateoas more in detail?

[@awesome-coding]

Thanks you! Will post more detailed videos soon.

[@AboinTech]

loved it. made visually and content vise with good quality.

[@awesome-coding]

Glad you liked it!

[@moveonvillain1080]

is HATEOAS backend driving frontend kind of design or these two are different things?

[@ashleyfreebush]

very well explained...thanks awesome!!

[@awesome-coding]

Thank you!

[@MrSofazocker]

Im the CEO of HTMX and approve! HATEOAS for everyone!

[@TalesGrechi]

Great video!

[@anfytrion]

Great explanation 👏and as always great video

[@awesome-coding]

Thank you!

[@harshrathod50]

Very informative, thanks. 🎉

[@awesome-coding]

Glad it was helpful!

[@bige2899]

What makes me astonished is how many well-known websites uses 400 bad request as a standard 4xx status code , 400 should be used only when there is a syntax error in request payload.

[@bige2899]

What makes me astonished is how many well-known websites uses 400 as a standard 4xx status code , 400 should be used only when there is a syntax error in the request payload.

[@chrisder1814]

hello could you help me understand what I could do with certain APIs by using them in GPT customs

[@solorsix]

Nice work!

[@awesome-coding]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@DeviantFox]

so much hate but I really fucking liked this video.

[@manuelvega.]

Don't forget the meta data in the response!

[@L4B5]

`active` should go as a filter param to items resource: orders/123/items?filter=active

[@2u841r]

Very helpful

[@awesome-coding]

Glad it helped!

[@rsjeyt]

this was great

[@awesome-coding]

Thank you!

[@HansWurst-dk6pp]

I heavily disagree with the content of the video at 4.43. You should never just crerate CRUD endpoints around resources. Instead you should always prefer actions. The backend does highly diverse actions to the resources. The frontend should just tell the backend to do them, by calling an appropriate endpoint.

[@bijeesraj007]

I totally agree with the use of actions , In my opinion they should be exactly same as it mentioned in the video . HTTP verb + resource name = intended action . The resources should be nouns not actions .

[@Kubkochan]

​@@bijeesraj007gl

[@kartikkewalramani6696]

I thought i was clicking on a fireship vid, feeling sad

[@harrisonkaiser5138]

What’s the solution if we need to specify more than two levels in the URL to specify complex relationships?

[@follantic]

RPC style naming. Because there's no indirection most of the problems with REST don't exist.

[@awesome-coding]

There is no hard rule of thumb. As you can see in the comments, people bend and interpret some of these rules. You can have more than two levels if that's really needed, but it should be on very specific cases. If you have a concrete example we can discuss it.

[@naranyala_dev]

hypermedia mentioned

[@vuenice]

[5:19] why Django has forward slash by default included in routes then?

[@awesome-coding]

I guess we would have to ask them :D

[@user-nu5eu6ih1r]

then what is the right uri for login,sign in

[@awesome-coding]

You found some of the exceptions :). I usually go with: - /api/v1/auth/login - /api/v1/auth/register - /api/v1/auth/sso/authorize - /api/v1/auth/sso/callback

[@Shivam-sl4sp]

which software do you use for editing?

[@awesome-coding]

Adobe premiere pro

[@bphilsochill]

Source material?

[@sire_ns]

wow!

[@chrisder1814]

hello I had some ideas but I don't know if these are feasible could you tell me what you think of them New : could you help me understand what results I could get using the api? - first of all creating a GPT, there are canva GPTs and I'm trying to understand if I could get different results by creating my own - then I wanted to know what more result could I obtain using the API in a make scenario? - and finally I was wondering what result I could obtain by creating a Chrome or WordPress extension? my idea is that a robot could scan all the articles on my WordPress site and maybe even my eBay Store then replace all my images so without me having to do it on each of my pages and therefore saving me a lot of time

[@awesome-coding]

Ideas?

[@chrisder1814]

@awesome-coding I just added some text to my original post

[@chrisder1814]

​@@awesome-codingHello can you understand what I am writing, I use google translate but the translations are really very bad and I thought that gpt does exactly the same translations as google

[@chrisder1814]

@@awesome-coding Hello, I wrote you on instagram

[@hellowill]

Always add versioning

[@netssrmrz]

Good video. But for IPC, REST is a half baked piece of cow poo. Maybe one day we'll have a proper binary API protocol that runs alongside HTTP with built in auth, discoverability, param marshalling, autogenerated client stubs, and we won't have to give a dam about the networking internals.

[@_Aarius_]

only level 3 is REST. everything else is just RPC with specific constraints

[@julian_handpan]

Just use ruby and rails 😏

[@mickomagallanes1185]

What do you mean the right way to build REST APIs? Yes there is a standard for it, but the purpose of the backend is to make the frontend developer's life easier. It is ok to have a REST API that has an http-only cookie for the browser, and it makes it somehow stateful. Why is it ok? Because it eliminates the need for the client-side to worry about storing the token. It should be stateless in terms of idempotence.

[@ludovicabomo9674]

🙂

[@simpingsyndrome]

Soo does it means laravel frameworks by default is a level 3 REST API? I recently have collaborated with a PHP guy develop an API using laravel, the best practices that he implement based on my understanding in this video, he implement too many slugs, and no single one query params, I think it's confusing for me as Frontend developer, aven though I read the API docs over and over I still didn't get it, what the hell is representating the every /a/b/c ,even on a very simple use case the API just give a response like completely annoying to read,there are many links,pages etc which is not even consumed, he even make an infinite breaking changes that breaks feature that already done, what a horrible PHP guy to collaborate with.

[@dynamohack]

hateos is just a simple mpa app made using php or any other backend language

[@awesome-coding]

I'm not sure what that means exactly.

[@dynamohack]

@@awesome-codingmpa is multi page application and all mpa most of the time uses hyper mean of all engine shit

[@qvxactgcw]

Which text to speech app you use?

[@Seedwreck]

Fireshippilled

[@tincoandringa4630]

Pro-tip: Never progress to level 3 of the richardson maturity model. HATEOAS has never benefited anyone in the history of HTTP.

[@awesome-coding]

I agree - it's more of a theoretical level.

[@StingSting844]

I don't agree. We converted around 10 pages in our product with htmx in just 2 weeks. This would have taken at least a quarter if it was just react + APIs. We actually had time to focus on details and literally everyone asked how these pages are loading faster 😂

[@sandiprai1383]

Why? Can you explain it

[@awesome-coding]

@@sandiprai1383 I mentioned the main reasons at the end of the video: - Not as performant / efficient since you are sending over the wire more bytes than necessary. Consider the option that HATEOAS links could have 10-15 entries; - Not widely adopted. Other than some public APIs I worked with in the past, everybody pretty much sticks to level 2. This is especially true in any software that's not open, since you don't really need self discoverable APIs - it' easier for the client to just map to whatever the API is - It is not really an enforced standard, which, in all fairness, it is true about pretty much any architecture / tech since it is very tough to enforce standards on the web :D

[@markyip554]

Isn't traditional 'SSR multi page' web applications fulfill this level by default?

[@QueeeeenZ]

I prefer GraphQL for the type safety.

[@ryo_5748]

The easiest way to build a great Rest API is to provide the same API as DummyJSON 😄

[@awesome-coding]

Fair

[@liquidrider]

was this a advertisement I seriously can't tell

[@awesome-coding]

Avertisment to what? :))

[@masterflitzer]

wtf where do you see an ad?

[@krellin]

no matter how you do it if its REST its shit most casual systems should use grpc just for sake of compile time type safety and performance they get for free

[@zorbak5090]

Awsome video man. Keep up the good work!

[@azulamazigh2789]

/items?active=1

[@awesome-coding]

Maybe /items?status=active? In your example one could call 1 a "magic number" :)

[@azulamazigh2789]

@@awesome-coding yes I agree with you

[@peterszarvas94]

/api/orders/123/items?filter=active or: /api/orders/123/items?active=true

[@CZARCZAR]

Clever video organization, it's great to be able to watch this kind of content for free! 🫶

[@awesome-coding]

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks!