Lesson 3 – REST API Design Fundamentals | Building Secure, Scalable & High-Performance APIs

Description

In Lesson 3, we dive into the fundamentals of REST API design, the foundation for building secure, scalable, fault-tolerant, and low-latency systems using Java and Spring Boot. A well-designed API improves maintainability, performance, security, and developer experience. Poor design, on the other hand, leads to breaking changes, security gaps, and difficult integrations. This lesson focuses on making strong engineering decisions when designing APIs. ✅ What You’ll Learn in This Lesson: - What REST is and its core architectural principles - How to design clean, resource-based endpoints - Using HTTP methods correctly (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE) - Understanding idempotency and why it matters for reliability - Passing data safely using: - Path parameters - Query parameters - Request bodies - Headers - API versioning strategies and best practices - Proper use of HTTP status codes and structured error responses - Pagination, filtering, and performance-friendly design - Common API design mistakes to avoid - How good design enables security, scalability, and monitoring This lesson prepares you for building real-world APIs and sets the foundation for upcoming lessons where we’ll implement a Spring Boot API and apply security best practices. 👍 Like, comment, and subscribe if this helped you 💬 Questions and improvements are always welcome Follow me on my socials to connect and see more awesome stuff 📌 **GitHub:** [https://github.com/NganeEmmanue](https://github.com/NganeEmmanue) 💼 **LinkedIn:** [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ngane-emmanuel-b25242150/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ngane-emmanuel-b25242150/) 📸 **Instagram:** @nganeemmanuel