CS API Development & Integration 5

Question 1

A REST endpoint returns different representations (JSON or XML) of the same resource based on a request header. Which header drives this content negotiation?

Accepted Answer

Accept

Answer

The Accept header tells the server which media types the client can process, enabling content negotiation.

Question 2

Which practice best protects an API key used by a server-side integration?

Accepted Answer

Storing it in environment variables or a secrets manager and rotating it periodically

Answer

Secrets belong in environment variables or a secrets manager with rotation, never in client code, repos, or logged URLs.

Question 3

In the token bucket rate-limiting algorithm, what happens when a request arrives and the bucket is empty?

Accepted Answer

The request is rejected or delayed until tokens refill

Answer

Each request consumes a token, so an empty bucket means the request must be throttled until the refill rate adds tokens.

Question 4

Two services exchange messages through a broker like RabbitMQ instead of calling each other's HTTP APIs directly. What integration benefit does this provide?

Accepted Answer

Temporal decoupling, so the consumer can be down while messages queue up

Answer

Message queues decouple producers from consumers in time, buffering work when the consumer is slow or offline.

Question 5

A GraphQL API suffers from clients sending deeply nested queries that overload the database. Which mitigation directly targets this risk?

Accepted Answer

Enforcing query depth and complexity limits on the server

Answer

Depth and complexity limits reject or cost-cap pathological queries before they hit the resolvers and database.

(CS) Computer Science Practice Test

(CS) Computer Science Practice Test

CS API Development & Integration 5