API Design · Senior · Question 16 of 75

How do you design an API endpoint whose underlying query is expensive and popular?

✓Correct answer: Cache at the right layer (HTTP with ETags, CDN, application cache), paginate, precompute aggregates, and rate limit per client
2Run the query on every request
3Return everything in one response

Explanation

Also make sure clients can use conditional requests so unchanged data costs almost nothing.

Further reading

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