REST APIs are an integral part of the modern web development process, but that doesn’t mean that they’re without their issues. While these problems can seem daunting at first, knowing what causes them and how to troubleshoot them is essential for any developer looking to use REST APIs effectively.
Don’t forget the Hyphen
One of the most common mistakes that REST API users make is forgetting to include the hyphen between parts of their request. For example:
- http://api.example.com/users?name=John&age=25
This will currently work, but if you ever change your API and it stops working, you’ll need to update your code with a new format that includes the hyphen separator (e.g., http://api.example.com/users?name-age=John+25). The same goes for calls that return multiple values—they must be separated by a space or a comma and then followed by an array bracket (e.g., { “user”: { “id”: 2 } }).
Be careful with spaces in URLs
If you’re using spaces in your URLs, you may run into issues. For example, if you want to access the API endpoint for a user’s profile with an id of 1, and your URL is https://api-url/user/1/, it will fail because there is an extra space between “user” and “1.” Instead of having that space at the end of your URL, try removing it by changing “https://api-url/user%2F1” to “https://api-url/user%2F1” in order to avoid this issue.
See more: How to Use LinkedIn API in Python?
Install Latest Version of API
Make sure you are using the most current version of the API, and have the latest updates installed.
To check your version, run this command:
curl -X GET https://api.company.com/v2/info/version -H “Authorization: Bearer “
Views don’t count as an endpoint unless you’ve exposed it
- Views are not exposed by default. The user has to make a call to the `/view` endpoint in order for your view to be exposed. You can do this in your callback when you register your view with the JWT token or you can use one of these other methods:
- Use the `/exposed_views` endpoint and pass in the name of your view as an argument.
- Use the `/expose` endpoint and pass in an array containing both a string and an object that represent your view, separated by commas (e.g., [“MyView”, { “name”: “MyView”, “template”: “templateName” }]).
The URL is case-sensitive, so be sure to verify that it matches exactly.
You may have run into problems with your REST API call because you forgot to include a slash or you mistyped the URL. That’s because URLs are case-sensitive. If you’re using the wrong one, it will not work.
You can find out more about this problem by checking out the documentation for your particular REST API provider: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaScriptSDK/latest/AWSChap3_RESTAPIaccessing_resourceful_services.html#common-troubleshooting-issues).
These are some common issues that can cause REST API calls to fail
- Don’t forget the hyphen. The REST API uses a hyphen (-) as the separator between key-value pairs in requests. If you forget this, your request will fail because of an unexpected character.
- Be careful with spaces in URLs. Avoid spaces when specifying URLs for resources or endpoints, or else you’ll run into trouble when trying to access those resources from another application or browser tab (for example). You can use underscores (_) instead of spaces if necessary, but be sure that both versions are consistent throughout your codebase if you choose this route: don’t mix and match underscores and spaces!
- Make sure you’re using the most current version of the API and have all updates installed where possible—this helps ensure that everything works smoothly behind-the-scenes without additional effort on your part; otherwise some calls could fail silently because they aren’t supported yet by updated versions of software used during compilation/execution phases at runtime (e.g., Java version 7u40). For example: JRE 8u31 may not support method calls like java_lang_StringBuilder::toString() whereas JRE 9u10 does support them without encountering any issues while running programs written using these methods since there is no longer any mismatch between implementations based on which particular version has been deployed within each respective runtime environment available today due to improvements made across platforms over time through constant maintenance efforts undertaken by their developers.”
Conclusion
If you are having trouble with your REST API calls, there are a few basic things to check before jumping in and looking at logs or trying other troubleshooting techniques. The first thing you need to make sure of is that you have the correct version installed in your account. Next, be sure that there aren’t spaces or capital letters in the URL (remember, it’s case-sensitive).
After verifying these two things, try refreshing the page and then retrying the call again. If this doesn’t work either, then start checking logs for errors or reach out to support!
