With the rise of mobile development and JavaScript frameworks, using a RESTful API is the best option to build a single interface between your data and your client.
The greatest advantage of using a set of conventions such as REST is that your API will be much easier to consume and develop around. Some endpoints are pretty straightforward and, as a result, your API will be much more easier to use and maintain
There are many ways to implement API Authentication in Laravel (one of them being Passport, a great way to implement OAuth2)
Some of the common HTTP result codes that are often used inside REST APIs are as follows:
200 - “OK”.
201 - “Created” (Used with POST).
400 - “Bad Request” (Perhaps missing required parameters).
401 - “Unauthorized” (Missing authentication parameters).
403 - “Forbidden” (You were authenticated but lacking required privileges).
404 - “Not Found”.
Another requirement for the PUT verb is idempotence, which in this case basically means you can send that request 1, 2 or 1000 times and the result will be the same: one updated resource in the database.
There are many advantages using Restful API:
- simplicity: the http protocol is almost universal and all languages comes with support for it.
- standard: when using json you are using javascript, in the web, javascript is a standard.
- lightweight: only using http and json is very straightforward.