API Versioning

The Sway Charts REST API attempts to maintain backward compatibility with the clients provided the following:

• Clients ignore the data they do not understand

• Clients only use the data they need

For example, in case of XML representation, clients must make sure they do not couple their logic with current XML representation in such a way that adding new fields causes their application to malfunction. This allows adding new data to resources without breaking clients.

If any data is removed or data meaning is changed, a new notification API version is introduced. Switch between different versions is based on the URI of the API (e.g. http://host/api/v1 for version 1 and http://host/api/v2 for version 2).

API versioning supports only major integer versions such as 1,2,3 etc. With the API, there is no notion of minor releases.

Change	New Version Released?
Addition of a new data field to data representation
Changing the logical meaning of a field
Removing a field
Changing the default representation, currency units etc.
Addition of new independent requests
New business rules and/or application flow
New default values for optional request parameters or fields