about this book
The Design of Web APIs was written to help you design web APIs that do more than just cover expressed needs. This book will help you design outstanding web APIs that are usable by anyone in many different contexts, and those that are also secure, durable, evolvable, efficient, and implementable. It uncovers all aspects of web API design and gives a full overview of the web APIs ecosystem and how API designers can contribute to it.
Who should read this book
The Design of Web APIs is, obviously, for anyone who needs to design web APIs. They can be developers working on a backend for mobile applications or websites or needing to connect microservices together, or they can be product owners working on an API as a product, and everything in between. Actually, this book can be read by all people working on a project involving the creation of an API.
How this book is organized: a roadmap
This book has three parts that cover 13 chapters.
Part 1 teaches the most fundamental concepts and skills needed to design APIs.
Chapter 1 discusses what an API is, why its design matters, and what the elements of API design are.
Chapter 2 explains how to accurately determine an API’s purpose—its real goals—by focusing on the point of view of API users and the software consuming the API, and by avoiding the point of view of the organization and software exposing the API.