Design a tagging system and REST APIs

Q: Design a tagging system and REST APIs

This question evaluates a candidate's ability in RESTful API design, data modeling, concurrency control, idempotency, pagination, and indexing/search strategies for a multi-tenant tagging system. It is commonly asked in the system design category to assess architectural decision-making and both conceptual understanding and practical application of endpoints, schema, and edge-case handling.

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Question

Design a tagging system (similar to tagging pages/issues) with a strong focus on REST API design.

Functional requirements:

Create a tag.
Rename a tag.
Delete a tag.
Attach/detach one or more tags to/from an entity (e.g., page , issue , etc.).
List tags for an entity.
Search entities by one or more tags (AND/OR semantics).

Non-functional requirements:

Tags should be unique by name within a tenant/workspace.
Handle concurrency and idempotency for attach/detach.
Pagination for list/search endpoints.

Deliverables:

Propose REST endpoints (request/response examples).
Data model / DB schema.
Indexing and query approach for tag search.
Edge cases (deleting a tag that is attached, renaming collisions, bulk operations).

Design a tagging system and REST APIs

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