Why versioning prevents breaking changes in Rest API - See It in Action

Why Versioning Prevents Breaking Changes in REST APIs

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple REST API for a bookstore. The API returns book details to users. Over time, you want to add new features without breaking existing clients that use your API.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to use API versioning to prevent breaking changes by creating two versions of a simple API response.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called book_v1 with keys title and author and their exact values

Create a variable called api_version and set it to the string 'v1'

Use an if statement to select the correct book dictionary based on api_version

Print the selected book dictionary

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

APIs often change over time. Versioning lets developers add new features without breaking apps that use old versions.

💼 Career

Understanding API versioning is important for backend developers and anyone working with web services to maintain compatibility.

1

Create the initial book data for version 1

Create a dictionary called book_v1 with these exact entries: 'title': 'The Great Gatsby' and 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'

Rest API

# Create the book_v1 dictionary with title and author
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary with the keys and values exactly as shown.

2

Set the API version variable

Create a variable called api_version and set it to the string 'v1'

Rest API

book_v1 = {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'}
# Set the api_version variable to 'v1'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use quotes around v1 to make it a string.

3

Add version 2 book data and select based on version

Create a dictionary called book_v2 with keys title, author, and year with values 'The Great Gatsby', 'F. Scott Fitzgerald', and 1925 respectively. Then use an if statement to create a variable book that is book_v1 if api_version is 'v1', else book_v2.

Rest API

book_v1 = {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'}
api_version = 'v1'
# Create book_v2 dictionary with title, author, and year
# Use if statement to assign book based on api_version
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to use if api_version == 'v1' to check the version and assign book accordingly.

4

Print the selected book data

Write a print statement to display the variable book

Rest API

book_v1 = {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'}
api_version = 'v1'
book_v2 = {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald', 'year': 1925}
if api_version == 'v1':
    book = book_v1
else:
    book = book_v2
# Print the book dictionary
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(book) to show the selected book data.