API Design Patterns

18 Batch operations

This chapter covers

• Batch operations and their differences from executing a series of standard methods
• Why batch operations should be atomic
• How batch request methods can hoist common fields to avoid repetition
• An exploration of each batch standard method (get, delete, create, and update)

This pattern provides guidelines by which users of an API can manipulate multiple resources in bulk without making separate API calls. These so-called batch operations behave similarly to the standard methods (discussed in chapter 7), but they avoid the necessity of multiple back-and-forth interactions of multiple API calls. The end result is a set of methods that permit retrieving, updating, or deleting a collection of resources with ...