API Design
JSON Best Practices for API Design
Keep your JSON responses predictable, versionable and easy to consume.
1. Use consistent casing
Pick camelCase or snake_case and use it everywhere. Mixed styles make clients harder to maintain.
2. Standardise error responses
Return a predictable shape for every error, e.g. {'{ "code": "INVALID_INPUT", "message": "Details...", "fields": [] }'}.
3. Prefer shallow, explicit structures
Deeply nested JSON is hard to diff, log and query. Flatten where it makes sense and name things clearly.
Related tools
- JSON Beautifier – quickly inspect and tidy responses.
- JSON Diff – compare versions of your API responses.
- JSONPath Tester – query nested JSON fields safely.