Spring Boot REST API Best Practices

Building REST APIs with Spring Boot is common in the microservices ecosystem. However, simply building an API is not enough. To ensure maintainability, scalability, and efficiency, following best practices is crucial. Here, we will explore some of the best practices for building REST APIs with Spring Boot and illustrate them with examples.

Spring Boot REST API Best Practices

1. Follow RESTful Resource Naming Guidelines

Using nouns for resource names and HTTP verbs for actions creates a clear and intuitive API structure. It helps clients understand what resources are available and what operations they can perform on them.

Example:

Good:

GET /users
POST /users
GET /users/{id}
PUT /users/{id}
DELETE /users/{id}

Bad:

GET /getUsers
POST /createUser
GET /getUserById
POST /updateUser
POST /deleteUser

In the above example, /users as a resource with HTTP GET indicates fetching user data, and with POST, it indicates creating a new user. This is more intuitive than /getUsers or /createUser, which tie the action to the URI, violating the REST principle that the URI should represent a resource, not the action on the resource.

2. Use HTTP Status Codes Appropriately