The Principles of API Design

By James Higginbotham
Apr 4, 2022

📄 Contents

␡

The Elements of Web API Design
API Design Is Communication
Reviewing the Principles of Software Design
Resource-Based API Design
Resources Are Not Object or Domain Models
Resource-Based APIs Exchange Messages
The Principles of Web API Design
Summary

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Principles of Web API Design: Delivering Value with APIs and Microservices

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API Design Is Communication

When developers think of software design, thoughts of classes, methods, functions, modules, and databases likely spring to mind. UML sequence and activity diagrams, or simple box and arrow diagrams if preferred, are used to convey understanding across a codebase. All these elements are part of the communication process development teams use for understanding and future developer onboarding.

Likewise, API design is a communication process. Rather than communicating inwardly between the members of a single team, APIs shift the communication outward. The lines of communication are extended in three distinct ways:

Communication across network boundaries: An API’s design, including its choice of protocol, has an impact on the chattiness of the API. Network protocols, such as HTTP, are better for coarse-grained communication. Other protocols, such as Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP), often used for messaging APIs, are better suited for fine-grained communication within a defined network boundary. The API design reflects the frequency of communication between systems and the impact it may have on performance because of network boundaries and bottlenecks. The API design process has a heavy impact on performance of the client and server.
Communication with consuming developers: API design and associated documentation are the user interface for developers. They inform developers how and when they are able to use each API operation. They also determine whether and how developers can combine operations to achieve more complex results. Communication early and often during the API design process is essential to meet the needs of developers consuming the API.
Communication to the marketplace: API design and documentation inform prospective customers, partners, and internal developers what outcomes the APIs make possible through the digital capabilities they offer. Effective API design helps to communicate and enable these digital capabilities.

API design is an important part of communication. An API design process helps us to consider these aspects of communication during the design phase.

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