From 11a5136b8d4a36aa0c5284ba76d2b97d3a34b031 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Rogerio Bernardo Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 13:05:47 -0300 Subject: [PATCH] Fix REST hierarchy disadvantage Previous definition assumed rest is only suited for simple hierarchies and presented a use case which can be easily expressed through query params or even an 'action' from a resource Replaced it with the indeed requisite for designing APIs, which is a solid understanding of the business, so relationships are well expressed. --- README.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index a6ae719d..541340da 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -1521,7 +1521,7 @@ REST is focused on exposing data. It minimizes the coupling between client/serv #### Disadvantage(s): REST -* With REST being focused on exposing data, it might not be a good fit if resources are not naturally organized or accessed in a simple hierarchy. For example, returning all updated records from the past hour matching a particular set of events is not easily expressed as a path. With REST, it is likely to be implemented with a combination of URI path, query parameters, and possibly the request body. +* With REST being resource oriented, it demands a solid understanding of the business, so hierarchy and relationships between resources can be properly modeled. A poorly designed API is hard to evolve and misleads future clients implementations. * REST typically relies on a few verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and PATCH) which sometimes doesn't fit your use case. For example, moving expired documents to the archive folder might not cleanly fit within these verbs. * Fetching complicated resources with nested hierarchies requires multiple round trips between the client and server to render single views, e.g. fetching content of a blog entry and the comments on that entry. For mobile applications operating in variable network conditions, these multiple roundtrips are highly undesirable. * Over time, more fields might be added to an API response and older clients will receive all new data fields, even those that they do not need, as a result, it bloats the payload size and leads to larger latencies.