RESTful Web API Patterns and Practices Cookbook

Foreword

Oh, what a tangled web we’ve woven!

I started my career in technology when the World Wide Web was first being used in the business arena. In fact, the common thread throughout my career has been applying the lessons of the web to the complex world of enterprise architecture and digital business strategy, especially those web APIs that seem to be at the center of everything.

In 2012, I had the pleasure of teaming up with Mike Amundsen. We’ve partnered on many API-themed endeavors since, and I’ve never stopped learning from him. It was Mike who taught me the fundamental principles of the web and so much more. It never ceases to amaze me how Mike is able to find insights I overlooked that seem so obvious in hindsight. RESTful Web API Patterns and Practices Cookbook puts many of these principles and insights into one very practical package.

When the internet first hit the mainstream back in the early ’90s, I was at a small undergraduate school getting a mathematics degree. My professors were the ones most excited at first, which makes sense, I guess, given the web’s academic roots. I used to have to pry them away from reading other people’s movie reviews to get back to our algebra lessons. In those musty, book-laden campus offices, it wasn’t obvious at all that the World Wide Web would become the most transformative human invention of my lifetime, and arguably of all time.

So how did we go from pixelated bulletin boards of personal interests to a world where 70% of business ...