Design and Build Great Web APIs

The Recommended Pattern for Testing for API Changes

Applying the three rules for modifying APIs starts at the design phase of your API update. It’s important you take the time to review all the requested changes before moving forward to make your API modifications. Then it’s important to implement those design changes faithfully. You also need to validate that your changes won’t break existing API consumers.

Validating API changes involves a few steps:

1. Asking yourself, “Who is using your API?”
2. Validating your API changes with existing tests
3. Confirming your API changes with new, stand-alone tests

Who Is Using Your API?

This can be a tricky business since you don’t always have access to all the API consumer apps or the teams that build ...