REST API Design & Web Architecture Quiz: 100 Backend Questions

REST API Design & Backend Web Architecture Comprehensive Exam

Master the design, governance, and architecture of enterprise RESTful APIs with this 100-question practice test. Built for backend software engineers, API architects, full-stack developers, and technical leads, this assessment tests HTTP semantics, resource modeling, idempotency, authentication, rate limiting, and contract versioning.

REST Architectural Principles & Topics Tested

The questions examine real-world API engineering standards and RFC specifications:

• HTTP Methods & Method Semantics: Safe vs idempotent methods (GET, HEAD, OPTIONS are safe; PUT, DELETE are idempotent; POST is non-idempotent; PATCH partial updates and RFC 6902 JSON Patch vs RFC 7396 JSON Merge Patch), and selecting correct status codes (200 OK, 201 Created, 202 Accepted, 204 No Content).
• Resource URI Modeling & Naming Conventions: Clean hierarchical resource structures (/api/v1/customers/{id}/orders), plural nouns, avoiding verbs in URIs, query parameter filtering, sorting (?sort=-createdAt), and field selection.
• Pagination & Large Dataset Strategies: Offset-based pagination (limit and offset and its performance degradation on deep scans) vs cursor-based pagination (opaque tokens, keyset pagination preserving consistency during live inserts), and pagination metadata headers.
• API Authentication & Authorization: Bearer tokens, API keys in headers vs query parameters, OAuth 2.0 grant types (Authorization Code with PKCE, Client Credentials), JWT (JSON Web Tokens) structure (header, payload, signature), claims validation, token revocation, and refreshing tokens.
• Rate Limiting & Traffic Management: Throttling algorithms (Token Bucket, Leaky Bucket, Sliding Window Counter), communicating limits via headers (X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, X-RateLimit-Reset, Retry-After), and returning 429 Too Many Requests.
• Versioning Strategies & Richardson Maturity Model: URI path versioning (/v1/) vs custom header versioning vs content negotiation (Accept: application/vnd.company.v1+json), backward compatibility guarantees, deprecation headers, and the 4 levels of the Richardson Maturity Model up to HATEOAS (Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State).
• Error Handling & Contract Standards: RFC 7807 / RFC 9457 Problem Details for HTTP APIs (type, title, status, detail, instance), input validation error formatting, and preventing stack trace leakage in production.

Real Backend Architecture Challenges

Questions challenge you to design resilient API contracts: handling partial updates safely with ETags and If-Match optimistic locking, designing webhook delivery systems with exponential backoff and replay signature verification, and preventing breaking schema changes.