foreword
The discipline of web API design has been maturing for well over a decade, and each edition of The Design of Web APIs by Arnaud Lauret provides a milestone marker for this collective API journey. To help you properly absorb and apply what you are about to read, you need to understand that the seeds of the specifications and techniques put forth by Arnaud in this book emerged between 2010 and 2015, when he began to help properly document this movement in character as the API Handyman. There is nobody better to learn API design from than Arnaud Lauret, and no better time to be implementing it.
I personally watched Arnaud dissect HTTP, OpenAPI, JSON Schema, and the other essential building blocks of the API economy between 2015 and 2019. As the API Handyman, he went deep down the API design rabbit hole and returned with the first edition of The Design of Web APIs. Now Arnaud has done it again, aligning his expertise in the pragmatic real-world design of the digital resources and capabilities that are shaping the global business landscape with what enterprises need to tame the API sprawl they face in 2025.