knowledge/technology/dev/programming/patterns/URL Suffix API.md

URL Suffix API

When designing a website, consider leveraging URL suffixes to indicate the format of the resource being accessed, similar to how file extensions are used in operating systems.

For example, a webpage located at /blog/post/id that renders human-readable content could have its machine-readable data served by appending a format-specific suffix to the same URL, such as /blog/post/id.json.

Benefits:

1. Intuitive API from Website Usage
   Users can easily derive API endpoints from existing website URLs by appending the desired format suffix.

2. Interchangeable Formats
   The same approach allows for multiple formats (e.g., .json, .msgpack, .protobuf) to be supported seamlessly, improving flexibility and usability.

This method simplifies the architecture, enhances consistency, and provides an elegant mechanism to serve both human-readable and machine-readable content from the same base URL.