REST API Design Rulebook

Chapter 7. Final Thoughts

State of the Art

Today, implementing our REST API designs is harder than it ought to be. The tools and frameworks that aim to support REST API developers have room for improvement. Many of the programming language-centric REST API development frameworks were originally created to help build web applications. These frameworks seem to suggest that REST APIs are similar enough to web applications that they should be cast from the same mold.

By repurposing the web application’s controller paradigm, many of today’s frameworks provide support for using URI templates to route inbound client requests to handler-style methods or functions. In recognition of the fact that developers don’t want to code web page templates to format their REST API’s data, most of the frameworks offer built-in XML and JSON-based serialization and deserialization of the server’s objects to and from an HTTP message’s body.

Today, there is no unanimous winner among the various REST API development framework candidates. The selection amounts to personal (or organizational) preference of programming language and platform.

Unfortunately, most of the current REST API development frameworks lack direct support for:

• Natural separation of the resource model from the server’s implementation model

• Uniform, cross-format hypermedia structures

• Automated HATEOAS; based on current state, determining which links should be provided in a response

• Media type schema validation and versioning

• Both partial and dynamically ...