API by Design

How do we design and build quality APIs? 
How much complexity is too much for our APIs? 
How do we know a design decision is a good one?

For most of us, it’s all guesswork. We do our best, making decisions we hope will lead to good outcomes. We know where we want to go, but we don’t have a map to get us there. Quality doesn’t happen by chance.

This book is about taking out the guesswork. It’s about finding ways to understand how complexity sneaks into our APIs and grows over time. By knowing these things, we can design and build better APIs. Rather than relying on hope, we can rely on insights that help us make informed and lasting decisions.

Table of contents

• Introduction

• The physics of it all

• Entropy in API design

• Understanding schema entropy

• The shape of schemas

• How references affect schema entropy

• Digging for the hidden complexities

• Keeping the entropy out

• Managing the entropy within

• Entropy and consumers

• Dealing with coupling

• Case study: GitHub’s API
  

Get in touch

You can connect with Stephen on Twitter or his website. His DMs are open on Twitter, and you can find his contact information on his website.

These are challenging times. If you need help paying for this book, please get in touch, and I’ll happily share a coupon for the total price off. No questions asked.