Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful
florian-kraemer.net
Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful
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Re: Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful
#2It felt easier going through the post after reading these bits near the end:
> The widespread adoption of a simpler, RPC-like style over HTTP can probably attributed to practical trade-offs in tooling and developer experience
> Therefore, simply be pragmatic. I personally like to avoid the term “RESTful” for the reasons given in the article and instead say “HTTP” based APIs.
Re: Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful
#3You know what type of API I like best?
/draw_point?x=7&y=20&r=255&g=0&b=0
/get_point?x=7&y=20
/delete_point?x=7&y=20
This is also how HN does it:
/vote?id=44507373&how=up&auth=...Re: Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful
#4Who cares, honestly? I never understood this debate; nobody has ever produced a perfect RESTful API anyway
Re: Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful
#5UI designers want control over the look of the page in detail. E.g. some actions that can be taken on a resource are a large button and some are hidden in a menu or not rendered in the UI at all.
A client application that doesn't have any knowledge about what actions are going to be possible with a resource, instead rendering them dynamically based on the API responses, is going to make them all look the same.
So RESTful APIs as described in the article aren't useful for the most common use case of Web APIs, implementing frontend UIs.
Re: Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful
#6You know what type of API I like best? /draw_point?x=7&y=20&r=255&g=0&b=0 /get_point?x=7&y=20 /delete_point?x=7&y=20 Because that is the easiest to implement, the easiest to write, the easiest to manually test and tinker with (by writing it directly into the url bar), the easiest to automate (curl .../draw_point?x=7&y=20). It also makes it possible to put it into a link and into a bookmark. This is also how HN does i…
This is great for API's that only have a few actions that can be taken on a given resource.
REST-API's then are especially suited for acting as a gateway to a database, to easily CRUD and fetch lists of information.
The best API's I've seen mix and match both patterns. RESTful API endpoints for data, "function call" endpoints for often-used actions like voting, bulk actions and other things that the client needs to be able to do, but you want the API to be in control of how it is applied.
Re: Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful
#7You know what type of API I like best? /draw_point?x=7&y=20&r=255&g=0&b=0 /get_point?x=7&y=20 /delete_point?x=7&y=20 Because that is the easiest to implement, the easiest to write, the easiest to manually test and tinker with (by writing it directly into the url bar), the easiest to automate (curl .../draw_point?x=7&y=20). It also makes it possible to put it into a link and into a bookmark. This is also how HN does i…
If you type it into the URL bar, it will use GET.
Surely you're not advocating mutating data with GET?
Re: Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful
#8RESTful APIs are not RESTful because REST is meh. Our APSi includes HATEAOS links and I have never, not once, witnessed their actual use (but they do double the size of response payloads).
It’s interesting that Stripe still even uses form-post on requests.
Re: Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful
#9Academically it might be correct, but shipping real features will in most cases be more important than hitting some text book definition of correctness.
Re: Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful
#10Wasn't the entire point of calling an API RESTful, that it's explicitly not REST, but only kind of REST-like.
Also, who determined these rules are the definition of RESTful?