“Principles of Web API Design”

A Practical Approach to API Design

Principles of Web API Design brings together principles and processes to help you succeed across the entire API design lifecycle. Drawing on extensive in-the-trenches experience, leading consultant James Higginbotham helps you align every stakeholder on specific outcomes, design APIs that deliver value, and scale the design process from small teams to the entire organization.

The book brings an “outside-in” perspective to API design to reflect the voices of customers and product teams, map requirements to specific and well-organized APIs, and choose the right API style for writing them. He walks through a real-world example from the ground up, offering guidance for anyone designing new APIs or extending existing APIs.

  • Deliver great APIs by getting your design processes right
  • Gain agreement on specific outcomes from design teams, customers, and other stakeholders
  • Craft job stories, conduct EventStorming, and model capabilities
  • Identify the right APIs, and organize operations into coherent API profiles
  • Choose the best styles for each project: REST, gRPC, GraphQL, or event-based async APIs
  • Refine designs based on feedback from documenters, testers, and customers
  • Decompose APIs into microservices
  • Mature your API program, implementing design and management processes that scale

Preview and Purchase Now

Keep up on the latest in the API community

A weekly newsletter that is hyper-focused on API strategy, design, development, and architecture for web and mobile apps. Great for developers, architects, product managers, and executives. We often cover additional topics, such as microservices, DevOps, culture, and containerization.

Sign up for the newsletter

Recent Presentations

Checkout out recent presentations to view slides and find links to resources mentioned.