API Response Optimization

Reduce payload sizes, implement caching, and enable compression for faster APIs.

Sparse Fieldsets

javascript

// Allow clients to select fields: GET /users?fields=id,name,email
app.get('/users', async (req, res) => {
  const fields = req.query.fields?.split(',') || null;
  const users = await User.find({}, fields?.join(' '));
  res.json(users);
});

HTTP Caching Headers

javascript

app.get('/products/:id', async (req, res) => {
  const product = await Product.findById(req.params.id);
  const etag = crypto.createHash('md5').update(JSON.stringify(product)).digest('hex');

  if (req.headers['if-none-match'] === etag) {
    return res.status(304).end();
  }

  res.set({
    'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
    'ETag': etag
  });
  res.json(product);
});

Response Compression

javascript

const compression = require('compression');

app.use(compression({
  filter: (req, res) => {
    if (req.headers['x-no-compression']) return false;
    return compression.filter(req, res);
  },
  level: 6  // Balance between speed and compression
}));

Performance Targets

Metric	Target
Response time	<100ms (from 500ms)
Payload size	<50KB (from 500KB)
Server CPU	<30% (from 80%)

Optimization Checklist

Remove sensitive/unnecessary fields from responses
Implement sparse fieldsets
Add ETag/Last-Modified headers
Enable gzip/brotli compression
Use pagination for collections
Eager load to prevent N+1 queries
Monitor with APM tools

Best Practices

Cache immutable resources aggressively
Use short TTL for frequently changing data
Invalidate cache on writes
Compress responses >1KB
Profile before optimizing