Principles of Web API Design: Delivering Value with APIs and Microservices

Chapter 1

The Principles of API Design

All architecture is design, but not all design is architecture.Architecture represents the set of significant design decisions that shape the form and the function of a system.

— Grady Booch

Organizations have been delivering APIs for decades. APIs started as libraries and components shared across an organization and sold by third parties. They then grew into distributed components using standards such as CORBA for distributed object integration and SOAP for integrating distributed services across organizations. These standards were designed for interoperability but lacked the elements of effective design, often requiring months of effort to successfully integrate them.

As these standards were replaced ...