Plural vs singular resource names in Rest API - Hands-On Comparison

Plural vs Singular Resource Names in REST API

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple REST API for a bookstore. You need to decide how to name your API endpoints correctly using plural and singular resource names.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to create REST API endpoints with proper plural and singular resource names for collections and individual items.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of books as initial data

Create a variable to hold the base API path

Use plural resource name for the collection endpoint

Use singular resource name for the single item endpoint

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Naming API endpoints correctly helps developers understand and use your API easily, making your web services clear and consistent.

💼 Career

Understanding REST API resource naming is essential for backend developers, API designers, and full-stack engineers working on web applications.

1

Create the initial data list

Create a list called books with these exact entries: 'The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice'.

Rest API

# Create the list of books
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets [] to create a list and separate items with commas.

2

Set the base API path

Create a variable called base_api_path and set it to the string "/api/v1".

Rest API

books = ['The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice']
# Create the base API path variable
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use double quotes "" to create the string.

3

Create plural and singular resource endpoints

Create two variables: books_endpoint by joining base_api_path and "/books", and book_endpoint by joining base_api_path and "/book".

Rest API

books = ['The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice']
base_api_path = "/api/v1"
# Create books_endpoint and book_endpoint variables
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the plus sign + to join strings.

4

Print the API endpoints

Print the books_endpoint and book_endpoint variables each on a new line.

Rest API

books = ['The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice']
base_api_path = "/api/v1"
books_endpoint = base_api_path + "/books"
book_endpoint = base_api_path + "/book"
# Print the endpoints
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use two print() statements, one for each variable.