All 7 RESTful API Development with PHP questions
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How does an API typically use HTTP status codes to communicate the result of a request, and what do common codes like 200, 404, and 500 represent? How does authentication typically work for a RESTful API, and what is the difference between session based authentication and token based authentication using something like a JSON Web Token? How should a well designed RESTful API structure its endpoints and URL naming conventions to remain intuitive and consistent as it grows? How does API rate limiting work, and why is it an important protection mechanism for a public facing RESTful API? How should a RESTful API handle versioning as its design evolves over time, and what are the tradeoffs between common approaches like URL based versioning and header based versioning? How should a RESTful API be designed to handle complex error responses consistently, including validation errors affecting multiple fields at once?
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What is a RESTful API, and how do standard HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE map to common data operations?

Beginner

Answer

A RESTful API is a style of web API design that treats data as a collection of resources, each identified by a specific URL, and uses standard HTTP methods to indicate the intended operation, with GET used for retrieving data, POST used for creating a new resource, PUT or PATCH used for updating an existing resource, and DELETE used for removing a resource, following widely understood conventions that make an API predictable and easy for other developers to use correctly.
GET /api/products       // retrieve all products
POST /api/products      // create a new product
PUT /api/products/5     // update product with id 5
DELETE /api/products/5  // delete product with id 5
Real-world example An e commerce API follows RESTful conventions consistently, letting any developer familiar with REST immediately understand that sending a DELETE request to a specific product URL will remove that product, without needing to read detailed custom documentation for every single endpoint.

Common follow-ups: What is the difference between PUT and PATCH for updating a resource?;Why are RESTful conventions valuable even though HTTP technically allows you to design an API any way you want?

Routing & Middleware;JSON Handling in PHP
All 7 RESTful API Development with PHP questions