LI:API

If you’ve ever argued with your team about the way your JSON responses should be formatted.

By following shared conventions, you can increase productivity, take advantage of generalized tooling, and focus on what matters: your application.

Here’s an example response from a blog that implements LI:API:

{
  "links": {
    "next": "http://example.com/articles?page[offset]=2",
    "last": "http://example.com/articles?page[offset]=10"
  },
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "1",
      "title": "LI:API paints my bikeshed!",
      "author": {
        "id": "9",
        "firstName": "Dan",
        "lastName": "Gebhardt",
        "twitter": "dgeb"
      },
      "comments": [
        {
          "id": "5",
          "body": "First!",
          "author": {
            "id": "2"
          }
        },
        {
          "id": "12",
          "body": "I like XML better",
          "author": {
            "id": "9"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

The response above contains the first in a collection of “articles”, as well as links to subsequent members in that collection. It also contains resources linked to the article, including its author and comments. Last but not least, links are provided that can be used to fetch or update any of these resources.

LI:API covers creating and updating resources as well, not just responses.

Format documentation

To get started with LI:API, check out documentation for the base specification.

Update history

• 2021-04-20: Initial release of the draft.