关于应执行多少次API调用的最佳实践是什么？

Question

I have a question to ask. What do you think is the best practice for an Android application(or probably any front-end application) to make calls to the API?

For example, say we have car companies that each company has cars and cars have a profile as well with information.

Let's assume that we have a login call, in order to authenticate. Shall the call be done to authenticate and retrieve all the data available(for companies and for cars that owned by the companies and all the available data -color, name, HP, etc.) or shall we split all the calls to several smaller ones(which I think is the most efficient-proper way)?

How should I know, when to split a more generic call to another one?

I am open to discuss any further.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Every resource end point should be very focused in it's responsibilities. We shouldn't be overloading it. If it's an authentication end point, it should just be authenticating the user and not sending back additional data. If you have separation of concerns it makes it easier to test as well as extend your application in the future. This is very similar to microservices pattern where every service end point serves a single purpose and is not entirely dependent on the other service end points which means if one end point is down for some reason, it shouldn't affect the other end points.

Answer 2

If you want to build a reusable API, try to follow the CRUD guidelines for accessing/writing to resources. If you create an endpoint for login + getting all the car data in one endpoint, that will be a very specific endpoint that won't really get used anywhere else. You want to minimize how much code is dedicated to one action only, so that you can modularize and use the code everywhere in your app.

If it were me, I would have a separate authorize endpoint and then an endpoint to get all the car data once the user has been authorized. This way, you will have created a reusable endpoint for getting that car data that you can use elsewhere.

Answer 3

You should have api's information specific to the page you are going to load, if its not then you would loose its efficiency.

For example: you have a huge list of items to be displayed on a particular screen but in that api you are giving information about items every detail that would make the api heavier and make the app take more time to load, instead give only that information that you are going to show on that page. You can also use pagination with recycle view to make it much more faster.

So as you said "Shall the call be done to authenticate and retrieve all the data available" no make it into two apis one for login other for retrieving cars detail.