13 Growing APIs

Throughout this book, we have expanded our vision of API design and APIs in general beyond simple application programming interfaces floating in the air. This is especially true of the four previous chapters. In chapters 10 and 11, you saw how to pay attention to not only the consumer’s but also the provider’s context to design realistic APIs that will be implementable and will fulfill consumers' needs in the most efficient way. And by thinking beyond an API’s current version, you learned in chapter 9 to create API designs that reduce the risk of introducing breaking changes when modifying them.

Designing APIs requires us to think beyond the APIs themselves because they are just one part of the whole. We started to uncover this whole in chapter 12. Indeed, you discovered that API designers can do more than just create APIs by participating in the making of different types of documentation. In this last chapter, we will explore three other API-design-related topics that any API designer must be aware of, and sometimes master, in order to grow their APIs in the long run.

13.1 The API lifecycle

13.2 Building API design guidelines

13.2.1 What to put in API design guidelines

13.2.2 Continuously building guidelines

13.3 Reviewing APIs

13.3.1 Challenging and analyzing needs

13.3.2 Linting the design

13.3.3 Reviewing the design from the provider’s perspective

13.3.4 Reviewing the design from the consumer’s perspective

13.3.5 Verifying the implementation

13.4 Communicating and sharing

Summary