Designing Web APIs

Have you ever heard of REST and are interested in knowing what it is? Do you think REST is simply sending XML or JSON through HTTP? Do you need to design a web API for your new startup? Then probably this book could help you.

This book is a clear introduction to the world of the design of REST Web APIs. First, we will start explaining the main concepts of REST, and why HTTP is the perfect protocol to implement it in the real world. Then we will explain how to design simple data centric APIs (CRUD) using REST. Afterwards we will go beyond the data centric approach and dive into the Hypermedia way of designing APIs. Finally we will take a brief look at the most important hypermedia data formats (HTML, RSS, HAL, SIREN) and how to use them in your API.

This book is not about coding, you will not found any code recipe in it. It does not explains how to use either a framework or a library. This book is about the core principles of REST and how to use them to design an extremely interoperable web API. It will try to clarify a lot of misunderstandings about HTTP and how to use HTTP to build an hypermedia API.

This book is written aimed to any programmer or software architect, whatever their level of familiarity with REST is. The book assumes that you are new to REST and HTTP, so it starts from the basics. If you are more familiarized with REST, you can skip the first chapters and go directly to the ones treating about hypermedia. In any case you will learn how to design easy to consume web APIs that will allow any programmer to build a client application for your system very easily.

This is a lean pub book, so the author will be very glad to receive any feedback or proposal of new content. Simply email him if you found something that looks wrong, or if you have any idea about the book. Of course once you buy it you will receive for free any updates it would have in the future.