Next Steps with REST APIs

You can now

• Explain resources, methods, and status codes
• Read and send JSON over HTTP
• Use auth headers responsibly
• Design simple endpoints with pagination and versioning
• Test with curl and recognize OpenAPI

Common pitfalls

• RPC-style paths for every action with no resource model
• 200 OK for every error
• Breaking clients without a version plan
• Putting secrets in URLs

Where to go next

• Build a small API in your favorite language
• Learn OAuth2 flows more deeply
• Caching and conditional requests
• Rate limiting and abuse controls
• gRPC or GraphQL when they fit better than REST

Practice idea

Design and mock a notes or bookstore API, write curl scripts for each endpoint, then implement the server.