Designing Web APIs: Building APIs That Developers Love

by Brenda Jin, Saurabh Sahni, Amir Shevat

Using a web API to provide services to application developers is one of the more satisfying endeavors that software engineers undertake. But building a popular API with a thriving developer ecosystem is also one of the most challenging. With this practical guide, developers, architects, and tech leads will learn how to navigate complex decisions for designing, scaling, marketing, and evolving interoperable APIs. Authors Brenda Jin, Saurabh Sahni, and Amir Shevat explain API design theory and provide hands-on exercises for building your web API and managing its operation in production. You’ll also learn how to build and maintain a following of app developers. This book includes expert advice, worksheets, checklists, and case studies from companies including Slack, Stripe, Facebook, Microsoft, Cloudinary, Oracle, and GitHub.

Genres: Programming, Technology, Computer Science, Technical, Nonfiction, Web, Software

230 pages, Paperback

Published October 16, 2018

Reviews

[Matt Eland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I professionally work as a development manager for an API development software team. I strongly recommend this book to anyone looking to widen their understanding of the various considerations that go into designing, developing, deploying, monitoring and deploying private or public APIs.

[Yura Gavrilovich · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book has both technical information like a description of the types of web APIs, some snippets of HTTP requests/responses from APIs of companies like Twitter, Slack, Stripe, description of OAuth workflow, and more general pieces of advice on building a developer community around your web API/service and crafting good documentation with tutorials.
Because of that, some chapters were really interesting for me to read while I was skipping parts from other chapters.

[Ahmad hosseini · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reviews the best practices and theory for solid API design and shows you how to build and maintain a developer ecosystem around an API. Book provides practical guide and advices that educate you how to navigate complex decisions for designing, scaling, marketing and evolving interoperable APIs.

[Antonio · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit simplistic but a good summary of api development

[Hardi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a firm believer of readme-driven programming, where you start by writing a readme file for your hypothetical API. This is a wonderful low-stress way of thinking through all the main ways your interface might get used by current and future colleagues, or even clients.

This book is more in-depth, going over the various ways your decisions will impact others, and giving plenty of practical examples of what would be a good approach for common use cases.

[The Lost Dreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an easy and useful choice for web developers who have some experience coding APIs. Even if you don't plan on creating a huge service involving partners and creating a specific community of developers around your product the book, especially its first half, encloses a handful of reasonable ideas, good practices, and clear explanations that will help you build a cleaner, better structured and, ultimately, more useful APIs.
Nevertheless, coders beware, this is not a book about code. Probably it's more oriented to product owners, architects, and team managers. But having a broad view of the larger picture behind all your code. It's always good to have many of these chapters in mind.
Maybe the final chapters of the book become a little bit too long, not adding so many insights, at least for those who get their hands dirty on the keyboard. Also, the examples and testimonials included, after feeling rather attractive and insightful in the first hundred pages, end up turning repetitive and a little too propagandistic. But apart from that, this has been an interesting reading.

[Damian Zydek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an introduction to designing Web API.

You will find here basic knowledge of designing, securing, versioning, scaling Web APIs as well as information about how to build a developer ecosystem and community around an API product.

I recommend it mostly to those who are planning to create their first public Web API for a commercial product.

[Karlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An overview of what items to take into account when building an API, particularly an external-facing one. This book is high-level, mostly understandable by business people as well, and is language-agnostic. It is not a guide for programming or writing code to create an API.

[Elizabeth Muirhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Technical sections are thorough, and the early chapters explaining the difference between the different types of APIs/design paradigms are great. Gets a little repetitive near the end, especially with the dev relations stuff.

[Billy Kovlasky · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must book, if you are non-technical working on exposing or using new APIs.
A bit basic if you are familiar with APIs and infrastructure.

Still, written in a very intuitive way.

[Mohammad Aghazadeh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book give me a big picture about Web API correct design.

[Kwuang · Rating 4 out of 5]

good high level overview

[William Darian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not the most technical book out there to build a Web APIs, but this is a good book for someone that will create an API and intend to maintain it in the long run.

[Javier · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely high overview, it does not go into detail in any section. What I learnt from this book can just be learnt by observing API documentation and things like that.

[Mahmoud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book if you are curious about building APIs, the book goes through the end to end experience required to build a successful API.

[Alb85 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Più che letto, l'ho sfogliato.

Ho trovato poche informazioni utili. Vengono solo menzionati i concetti di base che riguardano una Web API.

[Umar Ashfaq · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book gives a high level overview of what it takes to design web APIs. Useful if you’re new in the field, a bit boring if you’re experienced. Can be used as a basic reference book.

[Semjon Kopp · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives a good overview of all the parts of API development and management activities around it but lacks depth of the topic.