Design clean, predictable HTTP APIs — resources, status codes, pagination, errors, and versioning.
Web DevelopmentPDF · 4 pages· v1.0
4.2A REST API that follows conventions is easy to consume because developers can guess how it works. One that invents its own rules forces everyone to read docs for every endpoint. This free cheat sheet captures the conventions a well-designed HTTP API follows. It covers resource naming, choosing the right HTTP method and the right status code, designing consistent error responses, pagination and filtering, versioning, and idempotency. Everything is shown with concrete request/response examples so you can copy the shape directly into your own API. This is the second free piece in the Web Development series — a complete reference, not a teaser. It reflects widely accepted REST and HTTP conventions, so an API built from it will feel familiar to any developer who consumes it. After reading you will be able to design endpoints that are consistent and predictable, return the correct status codes, handle errors uniformly so clients can parse them, and paginate large collections without breaking clients. Who it is for: backend and full-stack developers designing or reviewing an HTTP API who want it to follow the conventions consumers expect, instead of guessing.
Yes, $0 with no paywalled section. It is a full reference, the second free resource in the Web Development series.
This is specifically about REST/HTTP APIs. The conventions here are what make a REST API predictable. GraphQL is a different model and out of scope.
Yes. It covers the main versioning strategies, their tradeoffs, and a recommended default so clients don't break when you evolve the API.
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