CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsdata-structures
Michał Staniewski
Michał Staniewski

Reputation: 260

Shaping API endpoints and response

Hello Stackoverflow,

I'm writing API's for quite a bit of time right now and now it came to work with one of these bigger api's. Started wondering how to shape this API, as many times I've seen on a bigger platforms that one big entity (for example product page in shop) is loaded separately (We can see that item body loaded, but comments are still fetching etc.).

Usually what I've done was attaching comments as a relation in SQL query, so my frontend queried single API Endpoint like:

http://api.example.com/items/:id

And it returned all necessary data like seller info, photos etc.

Logically seller info and photos are small pieces of data (Item can only have 1 seller and no more than 10 photos for example), but number of comments might be way larger collection with relationship (comment author).

Does it make sense to separate one endpoint into 2 independent endpoints like:

http://api.example.com/items/:id
http://api.example.com/items/:id/comments

What are downsides of this approach? Is it common practice? Or maybe I misunderstood some concept?

One downside might be 2 request performed, but on the other hand, first endpoint should return data faster (as it's lighter than fetching n of comments), so page might be displayed faster and display spinner for comments section. This way I'll be able to paginate comments too.

Are there any improvements that might be included in this separation of endpoints? Or maybe I'm totally wrong and it should be done totally different way?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 376

Answers (1)

David Vicente
David Vicente

Reputation: 3121

I think it is a good approach if:

  • The number of comments of one item can be large, because with this approach you could paginate it easier.

  • If you are going to need to access to the comments of one item without needing rest of item information

I think any of the previous conditions justify this decition, and yes, it is common approach.

Upvotes: 1

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