Have you ever created a REST API from scratch, starting with architecture design?

Yes, I have experience creating REST APIs from scratch, starting with architecture design. The typical process includes:

1. Requirements analysis — understanding what data and functions should be accessible via the API.
2. Architecture design — choosing technology stack, defining endpoint structure, data models, and database schema.
3. API contract definition — describing requests and responses, data formats (e.g., JSON), HTTP methods.
4. Implementation and testing — coding, routing setup, error handling, unit and integration tests.
5. Documentation — creating developer documentation, for example, with Swagger/OpenAPI.

Example architecture decision: using REST with resources where each resource corresponds to an entity (e.g., /users, /orders), supporting GET, POST, PUT, DELETE methods for CRUD operations, JWT authentication, and data storage in a relational database.