| Last updated: August 13, 2018
REST is by far the most used style to delineate APIs, especially in the world of mobile devices. There are also specific subsets of REST, such as OData, that further characterize how information should be transmitted between your applications and the server. While these subsets may be best for your specific needs, we will keep the discussion broad enough to cover all REST styles. Clinging to a famous, non-exclusive RESTful engineering style, it will ensure that new designers in charge of keeping their server code later feel comfortable with its operation and, above all, how new administrations should be assembled.
In this guide, we will also talk about RESTful API from the perspective of mobile application frameworks. These standards, however it may be, will surely help with the support of web applications and different frameworks with their API as well. In general, the client of the mobile application that requests the assets and the backend server that distributes those assets will be composed in several programming dialects and often by several improvement groups. Clinging to the REST standards below will ensure that the two groups establish and satisfy the right wishes when the time is looking for the two platforms to talk to each other.
Nothing is more horrible than suspecting that you have finished another final point before understanding that it is not in a format that the mobile client can use with ease. In companies where there are different development colleagues, it is basic for all to maintain a stable correspondence with respect to these mutual diagrams to maintain a strategic distance from incomprehensible miscommunication, delays, and laziness. Fulfilling a set of regularly-attended standards and wishes will allow groups to become faster and more productive, which makes advancement and support more affordable in the long term. As a profession mobile app developer and the CEO of VOCSO.COM, I have some excellent tips for developers to build a RESTful API for mobile apps. Let’s talk about these:
How are the back end different for mobile applications?
Before jumping into facilitation, security, design and different contemplations to create your RESTful API, we must analyze what makes the creation of an API for mobile applications unique in relation to the different frameworks. These specific concerns for mobile devices are basic to ensure that your RESTful API is configured to work with ease with a mobile application and the wishes of its customers.
HTTPS, not HTTP
The web was based on HTTP, but mobile platforms enforce the needs of HTTPS with the current encryption and rely on marked authentications. A mobile backend needs to use HTTPS for each endpoint. Your improvement, organization and generation status servers should use a similar type of marked endorsements. This will prevent brain pains later as you move/test the highlights in each condition, allowing you to have security issues before they become a problem in the live server and begin to influence genuine customers.
Server Does Most of the Work
To save money on organizing information expenses and battery life for clients, you commonly need mobile customers doing as meagre work as would be prudent. It’s very uncommon to see a mobile application that couldn’t profit by questioning and putting away information remotely or offloading difficult and touchy assignments to all the more great, remote machines. Connecting to a remote API keeps your put away information secure and permits your application to keep running easily for the client, remaining concentrated on exhibiting your information rapidly as opposed to ascertaining. Mobile application clients anticipate that their information will be matched up over the entirety of their gadgets, which is likewise illuminated by moving the information of the gadget with an API.
Giving the server a chance to do the truly difficult work likewise spares time for designers taking a shot at different platforms by moving and solidifying code to your server and displaying the outcomes to both your iOS and Android apps. The server will approach much-preferred equipment over the mobile customers for calculating, so it is insightful to use it.
Server problems can kill an application
You can also expect any error that a mobile client encounters to communicate with a bullhorn. Currently, technology customers have little persistence when something is not complete, especially mobile application customers. There is not a more important stage to share the problems than in the audits of App Store and Google Play applications. In the event that something goes wrong, the server should react with easy-to-understand error messages or erroneous codes that the client can use to alleviate the client and, if possible, help solve the problem. In fact, even a solitary mistake can cause a 1-star audit and positive surveys are basically related to the realization of an application. An excessive number of negative audits caused by server problems will stop new downloads of your application.
Training is more important
With the clients of mobile applications refreshing their applications (or not) in several frequencies, the formation of their API turns out to be more critical than other more controlled situations. With a few different variants of the application that run in nature, the server needs to solidify and handle the different requests that come from new and inherited clients alike. We will immerse ourselves in powerful methodologies on the best way to handle this later.
Plan for push notifications
A valuable route of remarkable correspondence for mobile devices is the pop-up message. There are external instruments that have practical experience in insertion warning, however, here and there you have to treat the procedure yourself. Your server could be in charge of GPS beacon tokens that map the gadgets to clients to send pop-up messages. However, using an administration such as Firebase to monitor device tokens and send push notifications to iOS and Android clients is usually smarter than yours.
Accommodating offline activity
Many mobile clients will anticipate that the application will have some restricted utility, even when it is disconnected. When reconnecting to the server, the disconnected movement must be taken into account with what remains of the database. This is particularly imperative for applications that customers can access in different gadgets, for example, their phone and tablet.
The organization of API calls with timestamps and task requests is something frontend and backend engineers should talk about. By following these guidelines you can easily make a successful mobile app for your business and provide more value to your customers.
About Author:
Deepak Chauhan is the CEO of VOCSO, a creative web agency based out of India, USA & UAE. The web business strategist, who has 12+ years of experience, has worked with many small businesses and startups across the globe to help them build successful websites/applications and launch them online with his strategic consulting. When not working, he enjoys traveling, photography and satisfying his taste buds. Want to read more articles from Deepak Chauhan? Just visit his web design blog page.