Designing Great Web APIs

Table of contents

1. 1. The Business of APIs
   1. What Are APIs?
   2. The Rise of the API Economy
      1. Reason #1 – Higher Demand
      2. Reason #2 – Simplicity
      3. Reason #3 –Lower Cost
      4. Reason #4 – New Business Models
   3. Business Advantages of Web APIs
      1. Consuming APIs from Others
      2. Exposing APIs to Other Developers
   4. Web API Development versus Traditional Software
2. 2. Guidelines for Designing a Great API
   1. #1 - Treat Your API as a Product
   2. #2 – Take an Outside-In Design Approach
   3. #3 – Write Great Documentation
   4. #4 – Have an Intuitive, Consistent Design
   5. #5 – Design for Security at the Start
   6. #6 – Share Great Code Examples
   7. #7 – Provide Helper Libraries
3. 3. The Design-First API Process
   1. User Interface Wireframes to Drive API Design
   2. API Modeling
      1. Step 1: Identify the Participants
      2. Step 2: Identify the Activities
      3. Step 3: Separate the Activities into Steps
      4. Step 4: Identify the Resources and Candidate APIs
      5. Step 5: Validate the API Model
   3. Next Step: Detailed API Design
4. 4. API Design Details
   1. An HTTP Primer
      1. HTTP Is Request/Response
      2. Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
      3. HTTP Verbs
      4. HTTP Requests
      5. HTTP Responses
   2. Building Your Resource Ontology
   3. Defining URLs Through Relationships
   4. Mapping Resource Lifecycles to HTTP Verbs
   5. Mapping Response Codes
   6. Validating Design Through Documentation and Prototyping
   7. Putting It All Together