Explanation

Answer Example

When designing a RESTful API, I consider the following: proper use of HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) to ensure clear functionality, meaningful and consistent status codes for error handling, and adopting JSON as the data format for interoperability. Security is another priority, so I implement HTTPS, authentication mechanisms like OAuth, and input validation to prevent SQL injection. For scalability, I design stateless APIs, use pagination for large datasets, and include versioning to manage updates without breaking existing implementations. For example, while designing an API for a payment platform, I ensured idempotency in POST requests to handle retries gracefully.