The 3 Best Web API Design Practices from Postman Expert
How are applications seamlessly integrated? How do they communicate so well with each other? APIs are the answer. Developers can build interconnected applications using APIs, which serve as a link between separate pieces of code. This creates high-quality products. The API lifecycle instructs developers how to design, develop, deploy, and consume APIs.
But, if the API lifecycle is inefficient, developers and consumers will suffer. Some consequences include unclear documentation, inconsistent interfaces, and frequent modifications. This makes integration and development tougher. Additionally, an inefficient API lifecycle can also disturb the consumer experience due to integration obstacles, postponed updates, and sluggish response times.
In this blog, you will get expert insights on how to prevent these problems. Kevin Swiber is a Senior API Strategy Lead at Postman, the world's largest API hub. He has shared some excellent strategies for effective API design and management practices.
Grokking the API Design Interview
Designing a modern system involves navigating complex requirements to create cohesive and functional designs. As a designer, you'll need to understand these requirements and guide the design process effectively, addressing both broad and specific topics in product design. In this course, you will design APIs for well-known systems such as YouTube, Stripe, and Zoom, understanding how these APIs integrate into the larger product ecosystem. You'll begin by discussing recurring concepts, using them as foundational building blocks. You'll trace the lifecycle of each API call from the client to the service to meet functional requirements. Additionally, you'll use a reference back-end implementation to demonstrate how an API call operates, with a focus on minimizing client-visible latency to create competitive APIs and products. This course prepares you for product architecture design interviews by examining systems from a client's perspective and discusses how client calls interact with the back-end system.
What is REST API?#
A REST API (or RESTful API) is an application programming interface that adheres to the REST architectural style. It enables interaction with RESTful web services using HTTP requests. Using HTTP requests, you can access and manipulate data. This includes GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE actions on resources.
Web API Best Practices From Postman Expert Kevin Swiber #
Kevin has accumulated a decade of experience working with API-focused startups. He concentrates on various domains, including the following:
Software development
Leadership
Mental health
Developer tools
His expertise revolves around establishing effective information pathways through Web APIs. Kevin also assists organizations in enhancing their API Lifecycle. Let's see his three best tips to ensure a smooth and cost-effective API lifecycle.
Using OpenAPI Documentation #
Most developers nowadays use the design-first approach. Before writing the code, they partner with stakeholders to design an API model. This model ensures seamless integration with external and internal applications. To do this, you need to define the structure of your API. OpenAPI Specification can give you these API structures.
What is OpenAPI? It is a fundamental open standard for documenting the capabilities, structure, and behavior of web APIs. It allows you to identify the configuration of your RESTful API, including request and response formats, before its construction. The main advantage of using OpenAPI is that you can collect feedback and refine the structure. This way, you can meet customer needs without wasting developers' time.
Creating an Efficient Web API Lifecycle #
Developer teams address API lifecycle problems using technical remedies. Still, technology's effectiveness is limited. To bring improvements, it is crucial to do the following:
Adapt processes to align with the technology.
Seek guidance from the right individuals to ensure well-informed decision-making.
By blending people, procedures, and technology, it's possible to enhance API lifecycle effectiveness. You must also uphold quality and security standards too.
Crafting a producer lifecycle map is the best strategy for process transformation. You need to guarantee the presence and input of relevant individuals at the right times. This map delineates the developers' stages when formulating, constructing, and deploying APIs.
Within each phase of this lifecycle, pinpointing the following aspects can be beneficial:
Stakeholders responsible
Technology employed
Actions undertaken
The scale of your organization will decide the complexity of this map. It could even be as basic as a sketch on a whiteboard. You just need to analyze your producer cycle. Get insights into the stages, technologies, and stakeholders. This provides a foundation for generating ideas to cut unnecessary repetition and redundancies.
API Development With the Best Consumer Experience #
It is not essential to focus only on producer lifecycles. For functionality, you must also pay attention to the consumer lifecycle. The API lifecycle defines the path of APIs within your software development process.
The API lifecycle defines the path of APIs within your software development process.
A pivotal point in the API lifecycle is the convergence of the producer and consumer lifecycles. Collaborate as a team to provide consistent consumer support across the lifecycle by asking these key questions:
How can we effectively distribute APIs for easy discovery?
How can users seamlessly integrate the API platform into their environment?
How can we obtain consumer feedback to enhance future APIs?
You must address these queries to help you test the consumer experience. You can do this through quantitative and qualitative metrics, which may include the following factors:
Time taken for the initial call
Duration of the initial integration
Surveys measuring developer satisfaction
The leveraging of such data, alongside methodologies like user journey mapping, aids in identifying potential enhancements within both producer and consumer lifecycles
The most successful API developers adopt a product-oriented perspective throughout the API lifecycle. Consumers aren't anonymous entities solely at the receiving end of the API. They are developers whose pain points demand understanding and resolution.
Some other tips to optimize your API lifecycle are as follows:
Structure the API design based on resources.
Use nouns for endpoints instead of verbs.
Specify request definitions.
Implement filtering, sorting, and pagination for retrieving data.
Take versioning into account.
Ensure API Security.
Implement Pagination.
Offer precise API Documentation.
If you want a detailed discussion of building an outstanding API, watch the webinar here.
Kevin's discussion with the Educative Team will teach you how to build robust APIs that perform, scale, and evolve.
Stay Up-To-Date With Our Latest Webinars #
Intrigued by Kevin's lessons? You can attend the next Educative webinar for free! Subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay in the loop. We invite industry experts to speak on a variety of technical topics. The following is a list of some of these topics:
How to excel in technical interviews to secure your desired position.
Progressing from an individual contributor to a managerial role.
Understanding System Design and its significance.
Enabling the growth of engineering teams at scale.
Design and Build Great Web APIs
At the start of this course, you’ll be introduced to a handful of important practices and principles for designing and building APIs that are robust, reliable, and resilient. You’ll also acquire skills in a wide range of developer tools, including tools for design, documentation, building, testing, security, and deployment. You'll learn the best practices for modeling an APIs lifecycle using Donald Norman’s action lifecycle. Then, you’ll learn how to use the sequence diagram for designing APIs and describing them using ALPS. For sketching an API, you will learn about Gehry's sketches. You will also cover OpenAPI and SwaggerHub for API mocking. Moreover, the usage of DARRT and NodeJS will be covered for building APIs. You'll finish with learning how to use the Postman for testing APIs and then deploy them using Heroku. By the end of this course, you will have an in-depth understanding of how to make fully functional efficient APIs from its inception to its deployment.
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