Design and Build Great Web APIs

by Mike Amundsen

APIs are transforming the business world at an increasing pace. Gain the essential skills needed to quickly design, build, and deploy quality web APIs that are robust, reliable, and resilient. Go from initial design through prototyping and implementation to deployment of mission-critical APIs for your organization. Test, secure, and deploy your API with confidence and avoid the “release into production” panic. Tackle just about any API challenge with more than a dozen open-source utilities and common programming patterns you can apply right away.

Genres: Programming, Technology, Software

250 pages, ebook

Published November 10, 2019

Reviews

[Adrian Bordinc · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess this book is okay and gives you a decent introduction if you’ve never designed, built and deployed a RESTful API before, otherwise I would say it’s pretty basic and you won’t get too much out of it.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall this is a great introduction to the specifics of API development for people with some development experience. Particularly the parts about API design are extremely useful. The common practice for developers is to either jump straight into code or to OpenAPI spec, but the author suggests to start with much higher level approach, resulting in much deeper understanding of API users' needs.

In the development part, author shows his “DARRT” framework to structuring the code base, which is truly refreshing – I wish there were more resources on this approach.

Muy biggest issue with this book is ironically that it's maybe too much hands on in some parts and about a third of it feels like a tutorial for various SaaS products and developer tools (e.g. how to use git, npm, Apiary, SwaggerHub…). But I understand why it was necessary and these parts are easily skipped.

In summary, I'd recommend this book even to experienced developers who think they know how to design an API.