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APIs have increased in popularity substantially over the last decade, from people just starting to build \"the API\" for their company, all the way to now where even small teams are building out multiple APIs and getting into distributed architectures with microservices. Many folks start building and building and after they have a few services in place they realize that everything is a mess and nobody knows what they are doing.

We've all been there; somebody you didn't know changed a field you didn't know existed in an API you have never heard of, and now the C-suite have come downstairs to see why their company is on the news because heavy traffic in Australia lead to downtime throughout the system and now nobody's keycard is working so nobody can use the bathroom anywhere in the world.

Eventually a new tool/idea pops up which promises to help with all those problems and people rush to rewrite everything in that tool/idea, be it gRPC, GraphQL, event-driven, microservices, everyone rushing off with no lessons learned and diving into freshly problematic setups.

The goal of this book is to help everyone step away from the hype cycle, and look at more fundamental practices in API development, by splitting this into eight massive parts, many of which could easily have been their own book.

- Part 1: Introduction to APIs - introduces the concept of API description formats, focusing on OpenAPI which is a requirement for pretty much anyone working with APIs these days

- Part 2: API Design Basics - the basics of API Design covering resources, collections, pagination, hypermedia controls, caching, rate limiting, etc,

- Part 3: OpenAPI - everything you need to work confidently with the OpenAPI Specification.

- Part 4: API Design First Workflow - using OpenAPI for a \"design first, code later\" workflow instead of just dumping it out as an afterthought to whatever code you happened to write.

- Part 5: Design a new API - actually walking through the creation of a brand new API using the design-first workflow, with mocks, docs, testing, validation, using OpenAPI to simplify the coding process.

- Part 6: Managing and Maintaining an API - some of the academic principles people spout mashing up against real world horror stories from life in the \"field\".

- Part 7: Taking APIs Further - a whole bunch of power moves and further concepts to avoid getting caught out.

- Part 8: Testing APIs - There are infinite ways to test an API at various stages of the lifecycle and we're going to look at all of them.

Yes, this is going to be one book. I don't know if people will be able to lift it, but we're going to see what happens. Thankfully I run a reforestation charity and 10% of royalties will be going there to make up for the trees that were harmed in the printing.

The joke for the first edition was that this book was going to buy me a boat. In truth it just covered NYC rent for a few years, but this time... I have bought a canal boat, and I'm converting it to electric. Proceeds for this book will help me ditch all the fossil fuels from the boat, so please do preorder and help me along both of these adventures.

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Kick off your book project in 2 hours! Live workshop on Zoom. You’ll leave with a real book project, progress on your first chapter, and a clear plan to keep going. Tuesday, June 16, 2026. Learn more…

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