Can you explain RESTful principles and how they apply to API design?
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RESTful principles are a set of guidelines for designing networked applications. They rely on a stateless, client-server, cacheable communications protocol -- the HTTP protocol is commonly used.
Key Principles
- Stateless: Each request from client to server must contain all the information needed to understand and process the request.
- Client-Server: Separates the user interface concerns from the data storage concerns. Improves portability across multiple platforms.
- Cacheable: Responses must define themselves as cacheable or non-cacheable to prevent clients from reusing stale or inappropriate data.
- Uniform Interface: Simplifies and decouples the architecture, which enables each part to evolve independently.
- Layered System: Architecture is composed of hierarchical layers by constraining component behavior.
