Get top 3 files from Folder in SharePoint 2013 using REST api

Hi Darian Glover 

It seems that this works on SharePoint Online, but does not work in SP 2013 on premise version. 

There are two options to return the data:-

First option is to use getitems instead of GetFolderByServerRelativeURL see below query and it works fine. The only issue with this which I found is that in case your folder have special charachter's like <'> then it will give an error stating that its an invalid query. 

http://sp13/sites/test1/_api/web/lists/getbytitle('Doc_anthour')/items?$select=ID,FileRef,Created,Author/ID&$expand=Author&$orderby=ArticleStartDate desc&$filter=substringof('Folder URL',FileRef)  

 Second option is use Post method and use REST + CAML query together 

REST API query :- http://siteurl/_api/web/lists/GetByTitle('LibraryName')/GetItems?$select=*,Author,FileRef,FileLeafRef,FieldValuesAsText/Author&$expand=FieldValuesAsText

 CAML Query :- "<View Scope='RecursiveAll'><Query><Where><And><Neq><FieldRef Name='ContentType'/><Value Type='Text'>Folder</Value></Neq><Eq><FieldRef Name='FileDirRef'/><Value Type='Lookup'>/Folder URL</Value></Eq></And></Where><OrderBy><FieldRef Name='ArticleStartDate' Ascending='False'/></OrderBy></Query><RowLimit>1</RowLimit></View>"

I used second option and it worked for me. Hope this will work for you as well.