How deeply does The Design of Web APIs, Second Edition cover http/2?

Explains compression, binary transmission, connection reuse, and parallelism, but stops short of detailed server configuration.

Http/2

As explained in The Design of Web APIs, Second Edition

HTTP/2 is a version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that supports multiplexed parallel requests, persistent connections, and more efficient header and body compression.

HTTP/2 improves API efficiency without changing familiar HTTP requests, responses, methods, or status codes. It compresses headers and bodies, uses binary transmission, and supports persistent connections with parallel requests. section 13.2.1

Choose HTTP/2 when connection efficiency affects consumer experience:

Prefer it over HTTP/1.1 when consumers need parallel requests without opening multiple connections. section 13.2.1
Use a well-designed REST API over HTTP/2 when GraphQL-specific aggregation or selection features are unnecessary. section 14.8.1
Consider gRPC for internal microservices needing HTTP/2 bidirectional streaming, but not when browsers must consume the API. section 14.8.1

Parallel API loading

A consumer loading several JSON resources can send requests in parallel over one persistent HTTP/2 connection. HTTP/1.1 instead requires multiple connections for parallelism, while compression reduces transferred textual data. section 13.2.1

How The Design of Web APIs, Second Edition covers it

Cover of The Design of Web APIs, Second Edition

liveBook manning.com

Read The Design of Web APIs, Second Edition on liveBook Get the book at manning.com

Related concepts

gRPCused by · gRPC is an open-source remote procedure call framework for defining services and invoking them across process or network boundaries, commonly using Protocol Buffers and HTTP/2.
HTTPcontrasts with · HTTP is a standardized application-layer protocol that defines request-and-response messages for transferring resource representations between networked systems.
multiplexinguses · Multiplexing is a technique for carrying or coordinating multiple independent streams, operations, or resources through a shared communication path or interface.
serverused by · A server is a computer system or software process that receives requests from clients or other systems and provides resources, data, or services in response.
HTTPSconfigured by · HTTPS is HTTP carried over TLS, which provides encryption and endpoint authentication for network communication.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of The Design of Web APIs, Second Edition. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.