Gain insights into designing robust APIs, explore essential tools for design, documentation, testing, and deployment. Delve into ALPS, OpenAPI, Postman, and Heroku for comprehensive API development.

Design and Build Great Web API's by The Pragmatic Programmer-01.png

webapis.tar.gz

Testing APIs

Testing API Exercise

Building API Exercise

Building API Exercise Solution

Securing API Exercise

Securing API Exercise Solution

MockAPI

Account Mock API

Company service Mock API

Challenge-1 Mock API Solution

Postman Mock API

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.

Design and Build Great Web APIs

# Exercise

In this challenge, you finally get to code the API. That means you’ll be using the design assets along with Node.js and the DARRT library to implement a working version of the Credit-Check API.

1. First, copy the DARRT library into your Node.js project.
2. Next, use information from the ALPS document and WSD diagram to update the DARRT library files.
3. Finally, fire up the completed Credit-Check API and run the validator script to ensure the service at least supports the intended happy-path workflow.



# Implement your API
You’ll need to use design documents from the project’s `assets` folder as guides while you implement the API. You can rely on the resource diagram (`credit-check-http.png`) and ALPS profile (`credit-check-alps.xml` or `credit-check-alps.json`) to help you fill in the `data.js`, `actions.js`, `resources.js`, and `transitions.js` files.


For this challenge, you won’t need to update the `representations.js` file because it’s already been set up for all the output formats needed for this project. You’ll also notice that the `data.js` file has been set up with the common basic data properties `id`, `status`, and `dateCreated`, `dateUpdated`. You’ll only need to add the fields defined by the `credit-check` design. The `actions.js`, `resources.js`, and `transitions.js` files will need to be updated to match your design specifications.

# Validate your API’s workflow

Finally, after updating the DARRT files, your API should be ready for validation. For this challenge, you can run the `hp-credit-check.sh` script provided in the API folder. To run this, execute the `sh tests/hp-credit-check.sh` command. Then, match your output with the output provided in the `cat tests/hp-credit-check-output.txt` text file in the same folder.

# Terminal
As usual, practice the tasks given above in the terminal below. The DARRT library has been already copied to the API folder.

> **Note:** Don’t forget to execute `npm run dev` in the second terminal. Make sure you set the path by executing `cd usercode/credit-check` before doing so. You can click the “**`+`**” sign to open the second terminal.


Practice implementing a working version of the Credit-Check API.


Challenge: Building APIs

Practice implementing a working version of the Credit-Check API.

Introduction

Understanding HTTP, REST, and APIs

Modeling APIs

Designing APIs

Describing APIs

Sketching APIs

Prototyping APIs

Building APIs

Testing APIs

Securing APIs

Deploying APIs

Modifying APIs

Some Parting Thoughts

Appendixes

Challenge: Building APIs

Exercise