Chapter 6. Building the API Layer
It can be said that, these days, we have definitely been immersed into the API era. This period has been defined as the API Economy, the term corresponding to the SOA period. However, as many have experienced, this is not an "era" but a growing ecosystem of independent actors running complex software, exposing their interfaces through the REST API over HTTP.
Start-ups are building entire business models on top of API publishing, building communities of developers to raise attention for their API and boost their adoption.
APIs are ubiquitous due to the standardization process of protocols and formats for the underlying communication, which is now happening majorly via JSON over HTTP. This simple requirement enables almost every third-party technology to integrate with APIs, from legacy software written in an ancient language and framework to the latest mobile operating system. The only requirement is, in fact, to support HTTP, which is...
