Idempotent Requests

Idempotency is a property of RESTful APIs wherein the success of an API call is not impacted by the number of times the call is made.

In other words, it prevents the misuse of a command by blocking repeat actions, which may be caused due to a network issue or server error.

For example, while sending a notification via any platforms, the API request is accompanied with an idempotency key x-Advantus.

This prevents a notification getting sent more than once in case the request is interrupted midway and a duplicate request is made.

Idempotency keys come with an expiration period, which means that a duplicate request can have a successful endpoint impact after the said time period.

HTTP requests like GET and DELETE are idempotent by nature and hence do not require the accompaniment of an idempotent key.