Introduction
This is a general design guide for networked APIs. It has been used inside Google since 2014 and is the guide that Google follows when designing Cloud APIs and other Google APIs. This design guide is shared here to inform outside developers and to make it easier for us all to work together.
Cloud Endpoints developers may find this guide particularly useful when designing gRPC APIs, and we strongly recommend such developers use these design principles. However, we don't mandate its use. You can use Cloud Endpoints and gRPC without following the guide.
This guide applies to both REST APIs and RPC APIs, with specific focus on gRPC APIs. gRPC APIs use Protocol Buffers to define their API surface and API Service Configuration to configure their API services, including HTTP mapping, logging, and monitoring. HTTP mapping features are used by Google APIs and Cloud Endpoints gRPC APIs for JSON/HTTP to Protocol Buffers/RPC transcoding.
This guide is a living document and additions to it will be made over time as new style and design patterns are adopted and approved. In that spirit, it is never going to be complete and there will always be ample room for the art and craft of API design.
Conventions Used in This Guide
The requirement level keywords "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" used in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.
In this document, such keywords are highlighted using bold font.
Sections
Resource-oriented Design
For information about implementing resource-oriented design for RPC and REST APIs, see AIP-121.
Resource Names
For information about resource names, see AIP-122.
Standard Methods
For general information about methods, see AIP-130.
For information about standard methods, see the following AIPs:
- For
Get, see AIP-131 - For
List, see AIP-132 - For
Create, see AIP-133 - For
Update, see AIP-134 - For
Delete, see AIP-135
Custom Methods
For information about custom methods, see AIP-136.
Additional topics
For information about the following topics, see their related AIPs.
- For Standard fields, see AIP-148
- For Errors, see AIP-193
- For Design patterns, see AIP guidance on design patterns
- For Inline API documentation, see AIP-192
- For Using proto3, see the Syntax section of AIP-191
- For Versioning, see AIP-185
- For Backward compatibility, see AIP-180
- For File structure, see the File Layout section of AIP-191
- For a Glossary of terms, see AIP-9
For information about the following topics, see their related pages in this guide.