Check this one: Build APIs You Won't Hate - Phil Sturgeon
Agree on all accounts.
Ask HN: What are good reads for designing APIs?
51–60 of 101 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are good reads for designing APIs?
#52I know you asked for books, but if you are an Apple Developer they had a really good talk at WWDC about API design called "Swift API Design Guidelines".
The docs have similar content: https://swift.org/documentation/api-design-guidelines/
Re: Ask HN: What are good reads for designing APIs?
#53I was always fond of the "how to GET a cup of coffee" article on REST and APIs. I know it's been posted here in the past (how I found it), but for ease of access:
Re: Ask HN: What are good reads for designing APIs?
#54Good documentation is a key part
- Good summary of best practices for documentation: https://bocoup.com/weblog/documenting-your-api
- Tips for good api doc design: http://blog.parse.com/learn/engineering/designing-great-api-...
Re: Ask HN: What are good reads for designing APIs?
#55http://apiusability.org/
This page was started by a dozen or so researchers back in 2009 and has a list of publications on the subject.
Re: Ask HN: What are good reads for designing APIs?
#56You'll notice in this thread that (at 9 comments in) there are no repeated recommendations. If the question was "What are some good reads for learning about algorithms?" you'd probably see the same handful of books being praised by everyone. Don't be overwhelmed by this though -- API design isn't an exact science. It's also very opinionated. Personally, I would just start reading actual API documentation (GitHub is a…
> I would just start reading actual API documentation (GitHub is a great place to start -- their API is a joy to work with)
This would be a good related subthread: links to API docs for what people consider to be both great, and terrible, APIs.
Re: Ask HN: What are good reads for designing APIs?
#57I think the single best thing an API designer should do is write a getting started guide with working sample code for the API they are producing.
On my last project I found myself revising the API surface twice as a result of doing so.
Re: Ask HN: What are good reads for designing APIs?
#58I really liked Building Stripe’s API and it’s sequel, Move fast, don’t break your API: http://amberonrails.com/building-stripes-api/ http://amberonrails.com/move-fast-dont-break-your-api/
The amount of versioning that Stripe does makes nervous. Is that a good practice?
Re: Ask HN: What are good reads for designing APIs?
#59When doing my last bigger API i read every recommendation. Still learned a lot. Everyone has different recommendations - dont get discouraged by this. Make sure also to look into newer standards like JsonAPI if they are suitable - last time i tried to use it the tooling around it was still not strong enough and i decided to go w/ simpler custom api. Assuming it has to be a restful api (vs graphql) and assuming you wa…
Wouldn't most people disagree with: "not `/posts/343/comments` but `/comments?post_id=232`"?