Chapter 6: API Design Practices
APIs are a company's greatest digital asset. Modern applications rely heavily on these backend services to realize their amazing digital experiences. Successful API platforms can capture customers, while the bad ones will be a liability, resulting in a lot of support calls. Hence, adhering to good design and implementation practices is critical to ensuring you have a quality product. Public APIs carry the inherent risk of impacting brand reputation if not done right.
A good API is one that is easy to understand, simple to use, easy to maintain and extend, and provides output as per the expectation of the audience. Careful planning and a well-thought-through design and implementation approach that considers all the requirements are strongly recommended before you write any code. Also, development practices such as test-driven development may be useful in detecting any issues at the early stages.
The purpose of this chapter is to...
