Ask HN: Are batch endpoints a good pattern in REST APIs?

9 points

5 years ago

We've been asked by a number of our customers to add endpoints in our API that would allow them to create, update, or delete objects in bulk. Today, we try to keep our endpoints pretty simple, like this:

  POST /resource
  PATCH /resource/:id
  GET /resource/:id
  DELETE /resource/:id

The reason for the ask comes when someone needs to operate on thousands (or more) records at a time, and it's more efficient to just do it at once rather than be at the whims of request latencies and rate limits. So I understand the reason behind it. Yet, I don't see a lot of great APIs offer endpoints like this.

Does anyone have thoughts on if this is an ok pattern (or anti-pattern)? I would be curious to see example API docs of any companies that do this particularly well.

(For reference, this is our API: https://docs.moderntreasury.com/)

12 comments

12 comments