API Versioning

Effective API versioning is crucial for managing changes, ensuring backward compatibility, and allowing clients to migrate at their own pace.

Why Version Your API?

APIs evolve. New features are added, existing ones are modified, and sometimes functionalities are deprecated or removed. Without a clear versioning strategy, these changes can break existing integrations for your users. Versioning allows you to:

Introduce breaking changes without disrupting older clients.
Communicate API changes clearly to consumers.
Provide a stable interface for existing integrations.
Gracefully deprecate and eventually remove old versions.

Versioning Strategies

We employ a URL-based versioning strategy for our API. This is a common and straightforward approach where the version number is explicitly included in the API endpoint path.

URI Versioning

The version is part of the resource path. This makes the version number highly visible and easy to understand.

Example Endpoints

All API requests should include the version number. The current stable version is v1.

GET /v1/users

Retrieves a list of users from the API (version 1).

GET /v1/users/{id}

Retrieves a specific user by ID (version 1).

POST /v1/users

Creates a new user (version 1).

Future Versions

As we introduce new, non-backward-compatible changes, we will release new versions. For example, a future major update might be available at /v2/.

GET /v2/products

Retrieves a list of products (potentially a new version with updated fields or behavior).

Best Practice: Always specify the version you are targeting in your requests. Clients should prefer to explicitly request a version rather than relying on a default, which might change over time.

Deprecation Policy

When a new version is released, older versions will not be immediately removed. We will maintain older versions for a reasonable period to allow developers time to migrate. Deprecation notices will be communicated through our developer portal and potentially via API response headers.

The exact deprecation timeline will be announced for each deprecated version.

Recommended Client Implementation

Clients should:

Construct API URLs with the desired version.
Monitor announcements for new versions and deprecation schedules.
Plan migration strategies for upcoming breaking changes.

Example of how to construct a request in JavaScript:

                
const API_BASE_URL = 'https://api.example.com';
const API_VERSION = 'v1';

async function getUsers() {
  const url = `${API_BASE_URL}/${API_VERSION}/users`;
  try {
    const response = await fetch(url, {
      method: 'GET',
      headers: {
        'Accept': 'application/json'
        // Include other necessary headers like Authorization
      }
    });

    if (!response.ok) {
      throw new Error(`HTTP error! status: ${response.status}`);
    }

    const data = await response.json();
    console.log('Users:', data);
    return data;
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Error fetching users:', error);
    // Handle error appropriately
  }
}

getUsers();