Looking for Best Practices in RESTful API Design?

This book is for you! Why? Because this book is packed with best practices on many technical aspects of RESTful API Design, such as the correct use of resources, URIs, representations, content types, data formats, parameters, HTTP status codes and HTTP methods.

You want to design and develop APIs like a Pro? Use API description languages to both design APIs and develop APIs efficiently. The book introduces the two most common API description languages RAML and OpenAPI/Swagger.

Your APIs connect to legacy systems? The book shows best practices for connecting APIs to existing backend systems.

You expect lots of traffic on your API? The book shows you how to achieve high security, performance, availability and smooth evolution and versioning.

Your company cares about its customers? Learn a customer-centric design and development approach for APIs, so you can design APIs as digital products.

So what is RESTful API Design?

Any type of design requires taking well-informed decisions. The decisions are intended to make the product better in some way, e.g. provide more functionality, provide better quality or a better user experience. Better design decisions typically lead to better products. This is no different when designing APIs. Which design decisions are there for APIs? We see four groups of design decisions.

Architectural Design Decisions

When designing an API, decisions have to be made regarding architectural issues, such as the patterns and the styles to be used. Should the API follow the REST or SOAP architectural style? These design decisions are foundational and have an impact on all following decisions.

API Frontend Design Decisions

Since the frontend of the API is visible to the API consumers (= customers of the API), frontend design decisions are quite critical for the success of an API. Frontend design for APIs is typically RESTful design. For RESTful frontend design we need to answer questions such as: How does the URI of the API look like? Are the parameters passed in the form of query parameters or path parameters? Which headers and status codes should be used?

API Backend Design Decisions

The functionality of the API depends on leveraging data and services of backend systems. Backend design decisions address the connection between API and backend. Design decisions regarding the integration, transformation, aggregation, security and error handling of the backend have an impact on the functionality of the API.

Non-functional API Design Decisions

The architectural, frontend and backend design decisions are primarily taken to craft the functionality of the API. However, these decisions also have an impact on the non-functional properties of the API, such as security, performance, availability, and evolvability. Non-functional properties of the API should not be an afterthought. The API needs to be designed right from the start to fulfill non-functional requirements.

In this book, we address all four groups of design decisions for APIs. The focus is, however, on REST and the API frontend design decisions.

The API-University Series is a modular series of books on API-related topics. Each book focuses on a particular API topic, so you can select the topics within APIs, which are relevant to you.

Keywords: RESTful, REST, API Design, API, API Description Languages, RAML, OpenAPI/Swagger

Customer Testimonials

Become a universal API Warrior
“One will simply become a universal API warrior – ready for anything. Still, the highest value lies in the fact that Matthias Biehl provides a step-by-step guide to designing a RESTful JSON-based API by covering a vast area of the topic, spanning across HTTP and its methods, status codes, URI structures, JSON syntax and structure, content negotiation, parameter types, metadata, error handling, validations, etc.​” More…
Ivan Burda on June 13th, 2018

Excellent
“I learned a lot. Very progressive, easy to read, quite detailed. Many thanks. Useful links to internet resources. Examples simple and to the point.”
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars on Amazon, Alviset Christophe on July 23, 2017

Well structured, open and highly informative
“Well structured, open and highly informative guide to the craft of smart, effective API Design. A highly consumable, must-have reference for API Designers, Architects, Engineers, and tech-savvy Product Managers. Eloquently delivered by a thought leader from the API World!”
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars on Amazon, December 8, 2016

A Must Read
“A must-read for anyone developing and designing APIs. The book is full of practical advice and walks you through the important decisions you need to make when building an API. You can feel that the author is speaking from personal experience. The REST concepts are well explained, many examples show the proper application of REST and the best practices are easy to follow.”
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars on Amazon, August 29, 2016

Useful Information and Easy Reading
Review of the API Design Book
via LinkedIn, September 20th, 2017

Great Book
Testimonial of the RESTful API Design Bookvia LinkedIn, March 25th, 2020

BookAuthority Best REST API Books of All Time

The Book

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About

Title: RESTful API Design
Author: Matthias Biehl
Length: 290 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1514735164
ISBN-13: 978-1514735169
Categories:
COMPUTERS > Web > Web Programming
COMPUTERS > Web > Web Services & APIs

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