cvat/rest-api-design.md at 3b1116185baee734ed4f276ced50cabf8bb67053 - cvat

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title	linkTitle	weight	description
REST API design principles	REST API design principles	100	Information on using the REST API scheme and principles of its design.

REST API scheme

Common scheme for our REST API is <VERB> [namespace] <objects> <id> <action>.

VERB can be POST, GET, PATCH, PUT, DELETE.
namespace should scope some specific functionality like auth, lambda. It is optional in the scheme.
Typical objects are tasks, projects, jobs.
When you want to extract a specific object from a collection, just specify its id.
An action can be used to simplify REST API or provide an endpoint for entities without objects endpoint like annotations, data, data/meta. Note: action should not duplicate other endpoints without a reason.

Use nouns instead of verbs in endpoint paths. For example, POST /api/tasks instead of POST /api/tasks/create.
Accept and respond with JSON whenever it is possible
Name collections with plural nouns (e.g. /tasks, /projects)
Try to keep the API structure flat. Prefer two separate endpoints for /projects and /tasks instead of /projects/:id1/tasks/:id2. Use filters to extract necessary information like /tasks/:id2?project=:id1. In some cases it is useful to get all tasks. If the structure is hierarchical, it cannot be done easily. Also you have to know both :id1 and :id2 to get information about the task. Note: for now we accept GET /tasks/:id2/jobs but it should be replaced by /jobs?task=:id2 in the future.
Handle errors gracefully and return standard error codes (e.g. 201, 400)
Allow filtering, sorting, and pagination
Maintain good security practices
Cache data to improve performance
Versioning our APIs. It should be done when you delete an endpoint or modify its behaviors. Versioning uses a schema with Accept header with vendor media type.