Design and Build Great Web APIs

What’s Next?

In this chapter, we explored the challenges of modifying APIs once they’re placed into production. We reviewed the principles that govern changes to production APIs: first, do no harm; forking; and knowing when to say no. We also covered the three rules of designing and implementing API updates: take nothing away, don’t redefine things, and make additions optional. We also discussed the importance of continuing to use existing tests to confirm that your updates don’t break any current API consumers, as well as discussed new, stand-alone tests for the added features of your updated API.

We spent time on the set of tasks needed to properly deploy API updates into production, including supporting reversibility, using side-by-side deployment, ...