I am curious about the meaning of Jira's REST API Url, '/rest/api/{2|3|latest}/'.

[Jaewoong Choi]

/rest/api/{2|3|latest}/

When I was looking for Jira's REST API, there was Url as below, and I looked for various things, and in the case of Url of 3, I thought I found it at first glance because it was the early version of Jira's rest api, but when I looked for it again, I heard that it was not the case. Each one. Gwa 2. In the case of, it seems to be a version of rest api, 3. In the case of Url, what does it mean?

1. /rest/api/2/

2. /rest/api/3/

3. /rest/api/latest

[Salih Tuç · Accepted solution]

Generally, REST APIs has this kind of versioning in order to safely updating for new features and migration/sunset of older/inefficient features that implemented on earlier versions.

For Jira, we have two versions right now:

• Version 2: It is the legacy one, has some strong core features.
• Version 3: It is still on beta, has experimental features in addition to the version 2 features.

These versions has too much similar endpoints, however I can say that v3 has more efficient and easy-to-use features. For example, I love searching issues more in v3.

And the "latest" means the latest version, which is v3 right now.

Also, please check out the documentation in Developer community:

This documentation is for version 3 of the Jira Cloud platform REST API, which is the latest version but is in beta. Version 2 and version 3 of the API offer the same collection of operations. However, version 3 provides support for the Atlassian Document Format (ADF) in:

• body in comments, including where comments are used in issue, issue link, and transition resources.
• comment in worklogs.
• description and environment fields in issues.
• textarea type custom fields (multi-line text fields) in issues. Single line custom fields (textfield) accept a string and don't handle Atlassian Document Format content.

However, these new features are under development and may change.

[Jaewoong Choi]

I checked again in the link below, and in the end, is it correct that the Url of /rest/api/latest is REST API Version2 in Jira DC 9.12 (the version I am currently using) version?

And if REST Version3 and Version4 came out from each JIRA, it is the latest version of REST API that came out at /rest/api/latest.

https://developer.atlassian.com/server/framework/atlassian-sdk/atlassian-rest-api-design-guidelines-version-1/#version-control-for-apis

[Salih Tuç]

Yeah, you are correct. For DC, latest version is v2 (as @Marc - Devoteam answered below); I answered by assuming you are using Cloud.

And yes, you are right on the second one, too. The "latest" version is dynamically gets the real latest published API version.

By the way, as a practical suggestion; if you will operate on the response in your application, then you should use the specific version in your requests (since the new versions has possibility of changes on the JSON schema). But if you are just requesting or giving some info, use the latest.

[Jaewoong Choi]

@Salih Tuç @Marc - Devoteam 

The question is solved.
Thank you all for your help.

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Jaewoong Choi 

@Salih Tuç is correct here.

But if you are on Server/DC, so the latest version is 2. (tags on the issue)

Jira DC/Server Platform API - https://docs.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/api/REST/7.6.1/ 

[Jaewoong Choi]

The question is solved.
Thank you all for your help.