---
id: rest-api
title: REST API Design
---

This chapter contains generally applicable information on API design. When using
Ory services, one can expect a consistent experience when interacting with REST
APIs.

## Pagination

On REST endpoints that are explicitly labeled as such, pagination information is
available through the `Link` HTTP header.

The `Link` header contains a comma-delimited list of links to the following
pages (where applicable):

- First
- Next
- Previous (prev)
- Last

Pages are created based on the values of `per_page` and `page` provided in the
querystring, where `per_page` is the page size, and `page` is the current page.

In most scenarios, the `per_page` should be a multiple of the `page`.

Example:

```
> GET /resources?per_page=5&page=10 HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:4445
> User-Agent: curl/7.64.1
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Content-Type: application/json
< Link: </resources?per_page=5&page=0>; rel="first",</resources?per_page=5&page=15>; rel="next",</resources?per_page=5&page=5>; rel="prev",</resources?per_page=5&page=20>; rel="last"
< Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2019 23:34:29 GMT
< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
<
[...]
```

## Date Format

ORY's APIs use [rfc3339](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3339) as the date
format:

```
{
  "created_at": "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00"
}
```
