# API Usage Guidelines

Public cloud APIs comply with the RESTful API design principles. REST-based web services are organized into resources. Each resource is identified by one or more Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). An application accesses a resource based on the resource's Unified Resource Locator (URL). A URL is usually in the following format: https://Endpoint/uri. In the URL, uri indicates the resource path, that is, the API access path.

Public cloud APIs use HTTPS as the transmission protocol. Requests and responses are transmitted using JSON messages, with media type represented by Application/json.

For details about how to use APIs, see API Usage Guidelines.