RESTful API Design Guidelines and Best Practices

RESTful is the most popular API design specification for web data interfaces, and this article summarizes its design details to help create understandable and usable APIs.

URL Design emphasizes using verb+object structure, keeping the object a noun (e.g., # GET /articles ), preferring plural nouns, avoiding multi‑level paths, and using query strings for secondary parameters (e.g., # GET /authors/12?categories=2 ).

HTTP Method Override shows how to simulate PUT, PATCH, or DELETE when only GET/POST are available by adding the X-HTTP-Method-Override header.

Status Codes recommends returning precise codes: 2xx (e.g., # GET: 200 OK , # POST: 201 Created , # DELETE: 204 No Content ), 3xx (e.g., HTTP/1.1 303 See Other ), detailed 4xx (400, 401, 403, 404, 405, 410, 415, 422, 429) and minimal 5xx (500, 503).

Responses should be JSON objects with Content-Type: application/json , and clients must send Accept: application/json . Errors must use appropriate status codes rather than always returning 200.

HATEOAS encourages including related links in responses so clients can discover additional endpoints, as illustrated by GitHub’s API link structure and a custom "links" array example.