REST API Design: Filtering, Sorting, and Pagination

API design is crucial for enhancing Developer Experience (DX) and ensuring API performance and maintainability, whether the API is public or internal. While RESTful architecture offers a framework, there's no official API design guideline, prompting the need for advanced discussions on filtering and pagination. Filtering can be implemented using URL parameters with techniques like LHS brackets or RHS colons, each with its benefits and challenges, such as ease of parsing and handling special characters. Pagination methods, including offset, keyset, and seek pagination, address performance and consistency issues, especially with large data sets. Sorting can be managed by specifying order and field names in URL parameters, allowing for multi-column sorting. The article emphasizes that well-designed APIs can outlast server implementations and should anticipate future use cases, with Moesif offering analytics tools to monitor and improve API traffic and design.