Are there any naming convention guidelines for REST APIs? [closed]

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When creating REST APIs, are there any guidelines or defacto standards for naming conventions within the API (eg: URL endpoint path components, querystring parameters)? Are camel caps the norm, or underscores? others?

For example:

api.service.com/helloWorld/userId/x

or

api.service.com/hello_world/user_id/x

Note: This is not a question of RESTful API design, rather the naming convention guidelines to use for the eventual path components and/or query string parameters used.

Any guidelines would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I think you should avoid camel caps. The norm is to use lower case letters. I would also avoid underscores and use dashes instead

So your URL should look like this (ignoring the design issues as you requested :-))

api.service.com/hello-world/user-id/x

Answer 2

The REST API for Dropbox, Twitter, Google Web Services and Facebook all uses underscores.

Answer 3

Look closely at URI's for ordinary web resources. Those are your template. Think of directory trees; use simple Linux-like file and directory names.

HelloWorld isn't a really good class of resources. It doesn't appear to be a "thing". It might be, but it isn't very noun-like. A greeting is a thing.

user-id might be a noun that you're fetching. It's doubtful, however, that the result of your request is only a user_id. It's much more likely that the result of the request is a User. Therefore, user is the noun you're fetching

www.example.com/greeting/user/x/

Makes sense to me. Focus on making your REST request a kind of noun phrase -- a path through a hierarchy (or taxonomy, or directory). Use the simplest nouns possible, avoiding noun phrases if possible.

Generally, compound noun phrases usually mean another step in your hierarchy. So you don't have /hello-world/user/ and /hello-universe/user/. You have /hello/world/user/ and hello/universe/user/. Or possibly /world/hello/user/ and /universe/hello/user/.

The point is to provide a navigation path among resources.

Answer 4

'UserId' is wholly the wrong approach. The Verb (HTTP Methods) and Noun approach is what Roy Fielding meant for The REST architecture. The Nouns are either:

1. A Collection of things
2. A thing

One good naming convention is:

[POST or Create](To the *collection*)
sub.domain.tld/class_name.{media_type} 

[GET or Read](of *one* thing)
sub.domain.tld/class_name/id_value.{media_type}

[PUT or Update](of *one* thing)
sub.domain.tld/class_name/id_value.{media_type}

[DELETE](of *one* thing)
sub.domain.tld/class_name/id_value.{media_type}

[GET or Search](of a *collection*, FRIENDLY URL)
sub.domain.tld/class_name.{media_type}/{var}/{value}/{more-var-value-pairs}

[GET or Search](of a *collection*, Normal URL)
sub.domain.tld/class_name.{media_type}?var=value&more-var-value-pairs

Where {media_type} is one of: json, xml, rss, pdf, png, even html.

It is possible to distinguish the collection by adding an 's' at the end, like:

'users.json' *collection of things*
'user/id_value.json' *single thing*

But this means you have to keep track of where you have put the 's' and where you haven't. Plus half the planet (Asians for starters) speaks languages without explicit plurals so the URL is less friendly to them.

Answer 5

No. REST has nothing to do with URI naming conventions. If you include these conventions as part of your API, out-of-band, instead of only via hypertext, then your API is not RESTful.

For more information, see http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven

Answer 6

Domain names are not case sensitive but the rest of the URI certainly can be. It's a big mistake to assume URIs are not case sensitive.

Answer 7

I have a list of guidelines at http://soaprobe.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/soa-rest-service-naming-guideline.html which we have used in prod. Guidelines are always debatable... I think consistency is sometimes more important than getting things perfect (if there is such a thing).

Answer 8

I don't think the camel case is the issue in that example, but I imagine a more RESTful naming convention for the above example would be:

api.service.com/helloWorld/userId/x

rather then making userId a query parameter (which is perfectly legal) my example denotes that resource in, IMO, a more RESTful way.

Answer 9

If you authenticate your clients with Oauth2 I think you will need underscore for at least two of your parameter names:

• client_id
• client_secret

I have used camelCase in my (not yet published) REST API. While writing the API documentation I have been thinking of changing everything to snake_case so I don't have to explain why the Oauth params are snake_case while other params are not.

See: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6749

Answer 10

I would say that it's preferable to use as few special characters as possible in REST URLs. One of the benefits of REST is that it makes the "interface" for a service easy to read. Camel case or Pascal case is probably good for the resource names (Users or users). I don't think there are really any hard standards around REST.

Also, I think Gandalf is right, it's usually cleaner in REST to not use query string parameters, but instead create paths that define which resources you want to deal with.

http://api.example.com/HelloWorld/Users/12345/Order/3/etc