RESTful API Design Questions

Focuses on designing resource oriented web APIs following Representational State Transfer principles and proper use of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Core skills include resource modeling and endpoint naming, use of correct Hypertext Transfer Protocol methods and semantics, status code selection and error response structure, idempotency and stateless design, request and response formats such as JavaScript Object Notation, pagination, filtering and sorting strategies, versioning and backward compatibility, authentication and authorization patterns, rate limiting and abuse prevention, caching and performance considerations, API contract testing and documentation, common anti patterns, and designing APIs that balance client usability with backend implementation concerns.

EasyTechnical

58 practiced

Explain how to use HTTP headers Content-Type and Accept for content negotiation in REST APIs. Provide examples of returning JSON and versioned responses using Accept headers, and discuss when header-based versioning is preferable to URI-based versioning in a full-stack environment.

EasyTechnical

102 practiced

Explain the core differences between RESTful APIs and RPC-style APIs. Discuss resource orientation, URL design, HTTP verb usage, statelessness, caching, and where you might prefer one approach over the other in a full-stack project. Provide a short example illustrating a RESTful resource endpoint and an equivalent RPC call and explain the trade-offs.

HardTechnical

75 practiced

Design a caching and invalidation strategy for product catalog endpoints that must reflect inventory updates within seconds. Consider CDN edge caching, cache tags, origin invalidation APIs, background cache warming, and read-through versus write-through caches. Discuss trade-offs between staleness, complexity, and cost and propose a pragmatic approach.

MediumTechnical

126 practiced

You must implement rate limiting for a public REST API. Compare fixed-window, sliding-window, and token-bucket algorithms. Explain how to implement a token-bucket limiter in a distributed environment using Redis or a similar store, how to enforce per-api-key and per-ip limits, and how to communicate limits to clients via headers.

EasyTechnical

114 practiced

Compare offset/limit and cursor-based pagination for REST APIs. Describe each approach, list advantages and disadvantages regarding consistency, performance, and ease of implementation, give an example cursor encoding scheme, and explain how you would expose pagination metadata and links in responses.

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