Tickets pile up. Rest APIs crawl under the weight of bad design.
A Rest API for procurement tickets should be fast, predictable, and secure. Every request must return exactly what the consuming service needs—no stale data, no bloated payloads. The core workflow starts with ticket creation. Your endpoint must validate all required fields: supplier ID, purchase order reference, and status. Response codes should be strict—201 for created, 400 for bad input, 401 for unauthorized.
Integration is where most deployments break. Procurement ticket APIs often go live without versioning or proper authentication. Use token-based access. Document endpoints in OpenAPI. Provide consistent pagination for list retrieval. Ensure search queries can filter by status, supplier, date range. This lets downstream systems automate approvals, invoices, and reconciliation without manual work.
Performance matters. Cache common lookups. Index database fields heavily used in ticket queries. Avoid nested joins that make the GET request slow. Aim for sub-200ms response time under load. Add rate limiting to protect the ticket API from abuse. Log every request, including payload size and latency. These logs drive optimization and identify problems fast.