Backend API Design Patterns

Hey everyone,

I'm looking to consolidate our knowledge on effective backend API design patterns. As our applications grow, maintaining a consistent and scalable API becomes crucial. I've been exploring patterns like:

• RESTful APIs
• GraphQL
• gRPC
• RPC (Remote Procedure Call)

What are your experiences with these? Which ones do you find most suitable for different types of projects (e.g., microservices, monolithic, mobile backends)? I'm particularly interested in patterns that promote maintainability, performance, and ease of integration.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and best practices!

Great topic, Tech_Guru! For most of my projects, especially those involving a mix of web and mobile clients, RESTful APIs have been the go-to. They're well-understood, widely supported, and have excellent tooling.

However, for internal microservices communication, I've found gRPC to be incredibly performant due to its use of Protocol Buffers and HTTP/2. The strongly typed contracts also significantly reduce integration errors.

GraphQL is fantastic for frontend teams needing flexibility, especially when dealing with complex data relationships, but it can add a bit more complexity on the backend for initial setup.

I agree with Software_King about gRPC for internal services. The efficiency is undeniable. We've also had success with a hybrid approach: REST for public-facing APIs and gRPC for inter-service communication. This allows us to leverage the strengths of both.

When considering API design, don't forget patterns like idempotency for PUT/DELETE requests, versioning (e.g., URI versioning or header versioning), and proper error handling with consistent status codes and informative error bodies.