REST APIs are easy to document. And their use often involves small variations in the URI. Therefore , URI shortening and parameter abbreviation helps particularly on mobile devices. The difference between a regular URL shortening and this kind of smaller URI's is that these will not necessarily be a hash. The URI's can have meaningful abbreviations given that we could control which API's they map to and because the APIs are limited. The shortened URI' s could be stored in a database and the URI's they map to could still be available independently. This means that we can develop the MVC route based API's as usual and have this service as an add on. The service merely redirects to the actual API"s as HTTP 302 and not require any static or dynamic pages assigned to the short URIs. This service could even live in the http proxy, if the API uses one. The proxy can be transparent on this redirection.
API documentation has to be kept in sync with this short URI mapping. Documentation can be generated from the config routes in which case the short APIs may need their own listing and correspond API documentation redirects. if the framework were to allow such short URI services, then thereis no need for an external service or database and short URi's could be provisioned in the config files itself. This will also help keep the documentation together.
Query string or Request body parameter abbreviation requires changes on the API implementation. Parameters need not be specified with their full names but by their first initial or some shortener convention. Only the parameter lookup changes so they can be kept in sync with their corresponding actual parameters. Together with abbreviations, short URI and documentation provide compelling convenience. Statistics could be gathered for both short and regular URI's to warrant continued usage.
API documentation has to be kept in sync with this short URI mapping. Documentation can be generated from the config routes in which case the short APIs may need their own listing and correspond API documentation redirects. if the framework were to allow such short URI services, then thereis no need for an external service or database and short URi's could be provisioned in the config files itself. This will also help keep the documentation together.
Query string or Request body parameter abbreviation requires changes on the API implementation. Parameters need not be specified with their full names but by their first initial or some shortener convention. Only the parameter lookup changes so they can be kept in sync with their corresponding actual parameters. Together with abbreviations, short URI and documentation provide compelling convenience. Statistics could be gathered for both short and regular URI's to warrant continued usage.
No comments:
Post a Comment