REST

Last week, I wrote an analysis of the IETF Idempotency-Key specification. The specification aims to avoid duplicated requests. In short, the idea is for the client to send a unique key along with the request: If the server doesn’t know the key, it proceeds as usual and then stores the responseIf the server knows the key, it short-circuits any further processing and immediately returns the stored response This post shows how to implement it with Apache APISIX. Overview Before starting

The first rule of distributed systems is 'Don’t distribute your system'. Designing distributed systems right is infamously hard for multiple reasons. The idempotency concept For example, a call to a function can succeed or fail in non-distributed systems. Once you move the called function to a remote component, a third option appears: you call the remote function but get no response from the component. At this point, it’s impossible to know whether the call reached the component o

If you’re not a REST expert, you probably use the same HTTP codes over and over in your responses, mostly 200, 404, and 500. If using authentication, you might perhaps add 401 and 403; if using redirects 301 and 302, that might be all. But the range of possible status codes is much broader than that and can improve semantics a lot. While many discussions about REST focus on entities and methods, using the correct response status codes can make your API stand out. 201: Created Many appli

Since I started working for Apache APISIX, I have tried to deepen my understanding of REST via various means. Did you read my review of API Design Patterns book? In the current literature, REST is generally promoted as the best thing since sliced bread. Yet, it comes with lots of challenges. In 2010(!), Martin Fowler wrote a post on the glory of REST. He lists three steps for an API to become truly REST: In each of these steps, issues lurk. This blog post focuses on listing some of them an

Designing an intuitive, user-friendly RESTful API is a tough job. It might already be a massive task if it’s your first attempt. Planning for the lifecycle management of your API is likely to be an afterthought. But it’s possible anyway: in this post, I’d like to propose a no-nonsense approach to evolving your APIs, even if it was not planned. The initial situation Let’s consider a sample application that says 'Hello' when using it. > curl http://org.apisix/hello Hello world > curl