How would you handle authentication in an API and what methods are available?

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API Design Interview Questions

  1. [JUNIOR] What is an API and what are its main purposes?
  2. [JUNIOR] What are the common HTTP methods used in REST APIs and what does each one do?
  3. [MID] What is the difference between REST and SOAP APIs?
  4. [MID] What are the differences between PUT, POST, and PATCH methods in REST?
  5. [JUNIOR] What is a REST API and what are its core principles?
  6. [JUNIOR] What are HTTP status codes and what are the main categories?
  7. [JUNIOR] What is the concept of statelessness in REST?
  8. [MID] How would you handle authentication in an API and what methods are available?
  9. [MID] What is API versioning and why is it important?
  10. [MID] What are idempotent HTTP methods and why are they relevant in RESTful API design?
  11. [SENIOR] How would you design an API for a specific domain such as an e-commerce platform?
  12. [SENIOR] What are the advantages and disadvantages of using GraphQL over REST?
  13. [JUNIOR] What is an API endpoint?
  14. [JUNIOR] What is a URI and how is it used in RESTful web services?
  15. [JUNIOR] What is the request-response cycle in APIs?
  16. [MID] What is rate limiting and throttling in API design and how would you implement them?
  17. [MID] How would you handle errors in an API and what should an error response look like?
  18. [MID] What is CORS and how does it affect API design?
  19. [MID] How would you implement pagination in an API response?
  20. [MID] How does HTTP Basic Authentication work?
  21. [SENIOR] What is OAuth 2.0 and how is it used to secure APIs?
  22. [SENIOR] What is the role of an API gateway and what are its benefits?
  23. [SENIOR] How would you ensure the security of sensitive data transmitted through an API?
  24. [SENIOR] How would you design an API to handle backward compatibility when introducing breaking changes?
  25. [JUNIOR] What is the difference between an API and a web service?
  26. [JUNIOR] What is a REST resource?
  27. [JUNIOR] What is a payload in terms of RESTful web services?
  28. [MID] What is the difference between stateful and stateless API design?
  29. [MID] What are the best practices for designing URI paths in RESTful web services?
  30. [MID] What is the difference between synchronous and asynchronous APIs?
  31. [MID] What is the difference between idempotent and safe HTTP methods?
  32. [MID] What are the best practices for naming resources and endpoints in a REST API?
  33. [MID] How do REST APIs utilize headers and what are some commonly used headers?
  34. [SENIOR] What is HATEOAS and what role does it play in RESTful API design?
  35. [SENIOR] What is the role of caching in API performance and how would you implement it?
  36. [SENIOR] How would you handle API deprecation gracefully?
  37. [SENIOR] What are the challenges of designing APIs for distributed systems?
  38. [SENIOR] How would you design rate limiting that is fair across multiple API consumers?
  39. [JUNIOR] What are the features of RESTful web services?
  40. [JUNIOR] What are the disadvantages of RESTful web services?
  41. [MID] What constitutes the core components of an HTTP request and response?
  42. [MID] What are the differences between REST and AJAX?
  43. [MID] Is it possible to send a payload in GET and DELETE methods?
  44. [MID] What makes REST services easily scalable?
  45. [SENIOR] What are webhooks and how do they differ from traditional API polling?
  46. [SENIOR] What role does middleware play in API design?
  47. [SENIOR] How would you ensure API scalability to handle increased traffic?
  48. [SENIOR] What strategies would you use for API versioning and what are the trade-offs of each?
  49. [EXPERT] How would you design an API that supports both real-time and batch processing use cases?
  50. [JUNIOR] What is the purpose of API documentation and what tools can be used to create it?
  51. [MID] How can you test RESTful web services?
  52. [SENIOR] What API design patterns are commonly used and when would you apply each one?
  53. [EXPERT] What is API throttling at the infrastructure level and how does it differ from application-level rate limiting?
  54. [EXPERT] How would you implement an idempotency key mechanism to ensure exactly-once semantics in APIs?
  55. [EXPERT] How would you design an API for handling long-running operations and communicating progress to clients?
  56. [EXPERT] How would you design an API contract-first approach using OpenAPI specifications and what are the trade-offs?
  57. [EXPERT] How would you handle eventual consistency in APIs that span multiple microservices?
  58. [EXPERT] How would you implement content negotiation in a REST API that supports multiple response formats?
  59. [EXPERT] What are the considerations for designing APIs that support multi-tenancy at scale?
  60. [EXPERT] What are the trade-offs between API gateway patterns such as edge gateway, two-tier gateway, and per-service gateway?
  61. [EXPERT] How would you implement API observability including distributed tracing, metrics, and logging across services?