Best practices for API versioning?
Are there any known how-tos or best practices for web service REST API versioning?
I have noticed that AWS does versioning by the URL of the endpoint. Is this the only way or are there other ways to accomplish the same goal? If there are multiple ways, what are the merits of each way?
This is a good and a tricky question. The topic of URI design is at the same time the most prominent part of a REST API and , therefore, a potentially long-term commitment towards the users of that API .
Since evolution of an application and, to a lesser extent, its API is a fact of life and that it's even similar to the evolution of a seemingly complex product like a programming language, the URI design should have less natural constraints and it should be preserved over time . The longer the application's and API's lifespan, the greater the commitment to the users of the application and API.
On the other hand, another fact of life is that it is hard to foresee all the resources and their aspects that would be consumed through the API. Luckily, it is not necessary to design the entire API which will be used until Apocalypse. It is sufficient to correctly define all the resource end-points and the addressing scheme of every resource and resource instance.
Over time you may need to add new resources and new attributes to each particular resource, but the method that API users follow to access a particular resources should not change once a resource addressing scheme becomes public and therefore final.
This method applies to HTTP verb semantics (eg PUT should always update/replace) and HTTP status codes that are supported in earlier API versions (they should continue to work so that API clients that have worked without human intervention should be able to continue to work like that).
Furthermore, since embedding of API version into the URI would disrupt the concept of hypermedia as the engine of application state (stated in Roy T. Fieldings PhD dissertation) by having a resource address/URI that would change over time, I would conclude that API versions should not be kept in resource URIs for a long time meaning that resource URIs that API users can depend on should be permalinks .
Sure, it is possible to embed API version in base URI but only for reasonable and restricted uses like debugging a API client that works with the the new API version. Such versioned APIs should be time-limited and available to limited groups of API users (like during closed betas) only. Otherwise, you commit yourself where you shouldn't.
A couple of thoughts regarding maintenance of API versions that have expiration date on them. All programming platforms/languages commonly used to implement web services (Java, .NET, PHP, Perl, Rails, etc.) allow easy binding of web service end-point(s) to a base URI. This way it's easy to gather and keep a collection of files/classes/methods separate across different API versions .
From the API users POV, it's also easier to work with and bind to a particular API version when it's this obvious but only for limited time, ie during development.
From the API maintainer's POV, it's easier to maintain different API versions in parallel by using source control systems that predominantly work on files as the smallest unit of (source code) versioning.
However, with API versions clearly visible in URI there's a caveat: one might also object this approach since API history becomes visible/aparent in the URI design and therefore is prone to changes over time which goes against the guidelines of REST. I agree!
The way to go around this reasonable objection, is to implement the latest API version under versionless API base URI. In this case, API client developers can choose to either:
develop against the latest one (committing themselves to maintain the application protecting it from eventual API changes that might break their badly designed API client ).
bind to a specific version of the API (which becomes apparent) but only for a limited time
For example, if API v3.0 is the latest API version, the following two should be aliases (ie behave identically to all API requests):
http://shonzilla/api/customers/1234 http://shonzilla/api/v3.0/customers/1234 http://shonzilla/api/v3/customers/1234
In addition, API clients that still try to point to the old API should be informed to use the latest previous API version, if the API version they're using is obsolete or not supported anymore . So accessing any of the obsolete URIs like these:
http://shonzilla/api/v2.2/customers/1234 http://shonzilla/api/v2.0/customers/1234 http://shonzilla/api/v2/customers/1234 http://shonzilla/api/v1.1/customers/1234 http://shonzilla/api/v1/customers/1234
should return any of the 30x HTTP status codes that indicate redirection that are used in conjunction with Location HTTP header that redirects to the appropriate version of resource URI which remain to be this one:
http://shonzilla/api/customers/1234
There are at least two redirection HTTP status codes that are appropriate for API versioning scenarios:
301 Moved permanently indicating that the resource with a requested URI is moved permanently to another URI (which should be a resource instance permalink that does not contain API version info). This status code can be used to indicate an obsolete/unsupported API version, informing API client that a versioned resource URI been replaced by a resource permalink .
302 Found indicating that the requested resource temporarily is located at another location, while requested URI may still supported. This status code may be useful when the version-less URIs are temporarily unavailable and that a request should be repeated using the redirection address (eg pointing to the URI with APi version embedded) and we want to tell clients to keep using it (ie the permalinks).
other scenarios can be found in Redirection 3xx chapter of HTTP 1.1 specification
The URL should NOT contain the versions. The version has nothing to do with "idea" of the resource you are requesting. You should try to think of the URL as being a path to the concept you would like - not how you want the item returned. The version dictates the representation of the object, not the concept of the object. As other posters have said, you should be specifying the format (including version) in the request header.
If you look at the full HTTP request for the URLs which have versions, it looks like this:
(BAD WAY TO DO IT):
http://company.com/api/v3.0/customer/123
====>
GET v3.0/customer/123 HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/xml
<====
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/xml
<customer version="3.0">
<name>Neil Armstrong</name>
</customer>
The header contains the line which contains the representation you are asking for ("Accept: application/xml"). That is where the version should go. Everyone seems to gloss over the fact that you may want the same thing in different formats and that the client should be able ask for what it wants. In the above example, the client is asking for ANY XML representation of the resource - not really the true representation of what it wants. The server could, in theory, return something completely unrelated to the request as long as it was XML and it would have to be parsed to realize it is wrong.
A better way is:
(GOOD WAY TO DO IT)
http://company.com/api/customer/123
===>
GET /customer/123 HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/vnd.company.myapp.customer-v3+xml
<===
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/vnd.company.myapp-v3+xml
<customer>
<name>Neil Armstrong</name>
</customer>
Further, lets say the clients think the XML is too verbose and now they want JSON instead. In the other examples you would have to have a new URL for the same customer, so you would end up with:
(BAD)
http://company.com/api/JSONv3.0/customers/123
or
http://company.com/api/v3.0/customers/123?format="JSON"
(or something similar). When in fact, every HTTP requests contains the format you are looking for:
(GOOD WAY TO DO IT)
===>
GET /customer/123 HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/vnd.company.myapp.customer-v3+json
<===
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/vnd.company.myapp-v3+json
{"customer":
{"name":"Neil Armstrong"}
}
Using this method, you have much more freedom in design and are actually adhering to the original idea of REST. You can change versions without disrupting clients, or incrementally change clients as the APIs are changed. If you choose to stop supporting a representation, you can respond to the requests with HTTP status code or custom codes. The client can also verify the response is in the correct format, and validate the XML.
There are many other advantages and I discuss some of them here on my blog: http://thereisnorightway.blogspot.com/2011/02/versioning-and-types-in-resthttp-api.html
One last example to show how putting the version in the URL is bad. Lets say you want some piece of information inside the object, and you have versioned your various objects (customers are v3.0, orders are v2.0, and shipto object is v4.2). Here is the nasty URL you must supply in the client:
(Another reason why version in the URL sucks)
http://company.com/api/v3.0/customer/123/v2.0/orders/4321/
We found it practical and useful to put the version in the URL. It makes it easy to tell what you're using at a glance. We do alias /foo to /foo/(latest versions) for ease of use, shorter / cleaner URLs, etc, as the accepted answer suggests.
Keeping backwards compatibility forever is often cost-prohibitive and/or very difficult. We prefer to give advanced notice of deprecation, redirects like suggested here, docs, and other mechanisms.
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