Irresistible APIs


Book Description

Summary A Web API is a platform with a web-style interface developers can use to implement functionality. Well-designed APIs feel like a natural extension of the application, rather than just a new interface into the backend database. Designing Web APIs based on use cases allows an organization to develop irresistible APIs, which developers can consume easily and which support the business values of that organization. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology It takes a village to deliver an irresistible web API. Business stakeholders look for an API that works side-by-side with the main product to enhance the experience for customers. Project managers require easy integration with other products or ways for customers to interact with your system. And, developers need APIs to consistently interoperate with external systems. The trick is getting the whole village together. This book shows you how. About the Book Irresistible APIspresents a process to create APIs that succeed for all members of the team. In it, you'll learn how to capture an application's core business value and extend it with an API that will delight the developers who use it. Thinking about APIs from the business point of view, while also considering the end-user experience, encourages you to explore both sides of the design process and learn some successful biz-to-dev communication patterns. Along the way, you'll start to view your APIs as part of your product's core value instead of just an add-on. What's Inside Design-driven development Developing meaningful use cases API guiding principles How to recognize successful APIs About the Reader Written for all members of an API design team, regardless of technical level. About the Author Kirsten Hunter is an API evangelist who helps developers and business stakeholders understand, design, and deliver amazing APIs. Table of Contents UNDERSTANDING WEB APIs What makes an API irresistible? Working with web APIs API First Web services explained DESIGNING WEB APIs Guiding principles for API design Defining the value for your API Creating your schema model Design-driven development Empowering your developers




APIs: A Strategy Guide


Book Description

"Creating channels with application programming interfaces"--Cover.




Design and Build Great Web APIs


Book Description

APIs are transforming the business world at an increasing pace. Gain the essential skills needed to quickly design, build, and deploy quality web APIs that are robust, reliable, and resilient. Go from initial design through prototyping and implementation to deployment of mission-critical APIs for your organization. Test, secure, and deploy your API with confidence and avoid the "release into production" panic. Tackle just about any API challenge with more than a dozen open-source utilities and common programming patterns you can apply right away. Good API design means starting with the API-First principle - understanding who is using the API and what they want to do with it - and applying basic design skills to match customers' needs while solving business-critical problems. Use the Sketch-Design-Build method to create reliable and scalable web APIs quickly and easily without a lot of risk to the day-to-day business operations. Create clear sequence diagrams, accurate specifications, and machine-readable API descriptions all reviewed, tested, and ready to turn into fully-functional NodeJS code. Create reliable test collections with Postman and implement proper identity and access control security with AuthO-without added cost or risk to the company. Deploy all of this to Heroku using a continuous delivery approach that pushes secure, well-tested code to your public servers ready for use by both internal and external developers. From design to code to test to deployment, unlock hidden business value and release stable and scalable web APIs that meet customer needs and solve important business problems in a consistent and reliable manner.




Designing Web APIs


Book Description

Using a web API to provide services to application developers is one of the more satisfying endeavors that software engineers undertake. But building a popular API with a thriving developer ecosystem is also one of the most challenging. With this practical guide, developers, architects, and tech leads will learn how to navigate complex decisions for designing, scaling, marketing, and evolving interoperable APIs. Authors Brenda Jin, Saurabh Sahni, and Amir Shevat explain API design theory and provide hands-on exercises for building your web API and managing its operation in production. You’ll also learn how to build and maintain a following of app developers. This book includes expert advice, worksheets, checklists, and case studies from companies including Slack, Stripe, Facebook, Microsoft, Cloudinary, Oracle, and GitHub. Get an overview of request-response and event-driven API design paradigms Learn best practices for designing an API that meets the needs of your users Use a template to create an API design process Scale your web API to support a growing number of API calls and use cases Regularly adapt the API to reflect changes to your product or business Provide developer resources that include API documentation, samples, and tools




Testing Web APIs


Book Description

Ensure your web APIs are consistent and bug-free by implementing an automated testing process. In Testing Web APIs you will: Design and implement a web API testing strategy Set up a test automation suite Learn contract testing with Pact Facilitate collaborative discussions to test web API designs Perform exploratory tests Experiment safely in a downloadable API sandbox environment Testing Web APIs teaches you to plan and implement the perfect testing strategy for your web APIs. In it, you’ll explore dozens of different testing activities to help you develop a custom testing regime for your projects. This practical book demystifies abstract strategic concepts by applying them to common API testing scenarios, revealing how these complex ideas work in the real world. You’ll learn to take a risk-driven approach to API testing, and build a strategy that goes beyond the basics of code and requirements coverage. Your whole team will soon be involved in ensuring quality! About the technology Web APIs are the public face of your application, and they need to be perfect. Implementing an automated testing program is the best way to ensure that your web APIs are production ready. About the book Testing Web APIs is a unique and practical guide, from the initial design of your testing suite through techniques for documentation, implementation, and delivery of consistently excellent APIs. You’ll see a wide range of testing techniques, from exploratory to live testing of production code, and how to save time with automation using industry-standard tools. This book helps take the hassle out of API testing. What's inside Design and implement a web API testing strategy Set up a test automation suite Contract testing with Pact Hands-on practice in the downloadable API sandbox About the reader For dedicated software QA and testers, or experienced developers. Examples in Java. About the author Mark Winteringham is the OpsBoss at Ministry of Testing, where he teaches many aspects of software testing. Table of Contents PART 1 THE VALUE OF WEB API TESTING 1 Why and how we test web APIs 2 Beginning our testing journey 3 Quality and risk PART 2 BEGINNING OUR TEST STRATEGY 4 Testing API designs 5 Exploratory testing APIs 6 Automating web API tests 7 Establishing and implementing a testing strategy PART 3 EXPANDING OUR TEST STRATEGY 8 Advanced web API automation 9 Contract testing 10 Performance testing 11 Security testing 12 Testing in production




Microservice APIs


Book Description

Strategies, best practices, and patterns that will help you design resilient microservices architecture and streamline your API integrations. In Microservice APIs, you’ll discover: Service decomposition strategies for microservices Documentation-driven development for APIs Best practices for designing REST and GraphQL APIs Documenting REST APIs with the OpenAPI specification (formerly Swagger) Documenting GraphQL APIs using the Schema Definition Language Building microservices APIs with Flask, FastAPI, Ariadne, and other frameworks Service implementation patterns for loosely coupled services Property-based testing to validate your APIs, and using automated API testing frameworks like schemathesis and Dredd Adding authentication and authorization to your microservice APIs using OAuth and OpenID Connect (OIDC) Deploying and operating microservices in AWS with Docker and Kubernetes Microservice APIs teaches you practical techniques for designing robust microservices with APIs that are easy to understand, consume, and maintain. You’ll benefit from author José Haro Peralta’s years of experience experimenting with microservices architecture, dodging pitfalls and learning from mistakes he’s made. Inside you’ll find strategies for delivering successful API integrations, implementing services with clear boundaries, managing cloud deployments, and handling microservices security. Written in a framework-agnostic manner, its universal principles can easily be applied to your favorite stack and toolset. About the technology Clean, clear APIs are essential to the success of microservice applications. Well-designed APIs enable reliable integrations between services and help simplify maintenance, scaling, and redesigns. Th is book teaches you the patterns, protocols, and strategies you need to design, build, and deploy effective REST and GraphQL microservices APIs. About the book Microservice APIs gathers proven techniques for creating and building easy-to-consume APIs for microservices applications. Rich with proven advice and Python-based examples, this practical book focuses on implementation over philosophy. You’ll learn how to build robust microservice APIs, test and protect them, and deploy them to the cloud following principles and patterns that work in any language. What's inside Service decomposition strategies for microservices Best practices for designing and building REST and GraphQL APIs Service implementation patterns for loosely coupled components API authorization with OAuth and OIDC Deployments with AWS and Kubernetes About the reader For developers familiar with the basics of web development. Examples are in Python. About the author José Haro Peralta is a consultant, author, and instructor. He’s also the founder of microapis.io. Table of Contents PART 1 INTRODUCING MICROSERVICE APIS 1 What are microservice APIs? 2 A basic API implementation 3 Designing microservices PART 2 DESIGNING AND BUILDING REST APIS 4 Principles of REST API design 5 Documenting REST APIs with OpenAPI 6 Building REST APIs with Python 7 Service implementation patterns for microservices PART 3 DESIGNING AND BUILDING GRAPHQL APIS 8 Designing GraphQL APIs 9 Consuming GraphQL APIs 10 Building GraphQL APIs with Python PART 4 SECURING, TESTING, AND DEPLOYING MICROSERVICE APIS 11 API authorization and authentication 12 Testing and validating APIs 13 Dockerizing microservice APIs 14 Deploying microservice APIs with Kubernetes




Hacking APIs


Book Description

Hacking APIs is a crash course in web API security testing that will prepare you to penetration-test APIs, reap high rewards on bug bounty programs, and make your own APIs more secure. Hacking APIs is a crash course on web API security testing that will prepare you to penetration-test APIs, reap high rewards on bug bounty programs, and make your own APIs more secure. You’ll learn how REST and GraphQL APIs work in the wild and set up a streamlined API testing lab with Burp Suite and Postman. Then you’ll master tools useful for reconnaissance, endpoint analysis, and fuzzing, such as Kiterunner and OWASP Amass. Next, you’ll learn to perform common attacks, like those targeting an API’s authentication mechanisms and the injection vulnerabilities commonly found in web applications. You’ll also learn techniques for bypassing protections against these attacks. In the book’s nine guided labs, which target intentionally vulnerable APIs, you’ll practice: • Enumerating APIs users and endpoints using fuzzing techniques • Using Postman to discover an excessive data exposure vulnerability • Performing a JSON Web Token attack against an API authentication process • Combining multiple API attack techniques to perform a NoSQL injection • Attacking a GraphQL API to uncover a broken object level authorization vulnerability By the end of the book, you’ll be prepared to uncover those high-payout API bugs other hackers aren’t finding and improve the security of applications on the web.




RESTful Web APIs


Book Description

The popularity of REST in recent years has led to tremendous growth in almost-RESTful APIs that don’t include many of the architecture’s benefits. With this practical guide, you’ll learn what it takes to design usable REST APIs that evolve over time. By focusing on solutions that cross a variety of domains, this book shows you how to create powerful and secure applications, using the tools designed for the world’s most successful distributed computing system: the World Wide Web. You’ll explore the concepts behind REST, learn different strategies for creating hypermedia-based APIs, and then put everything together with a step-by-step guide to designing a RESTful Web API. Examine API design strategies, including the collection pattern and pure hypermedia Understand how hypermedia ties representations together into a coherent API Discover how XMDP and ALPS profile formats can help you meet the Web API "semantic challenge" Learn close to two-dozen standardized hypermedia data formats Apply best practices for using HTTP in API implementations Create Web APIs with the JSON-LD standard and other the Linked Data approaches Understand the CoAP protocol for using REST in embedded systems




Continuous API Management


Book Description

A lot of work is required to release an API, but the effort doesn’t always pay off. Overplanning before an API matures is a wasted investment, while underplanning can lead to disaster. This practical guide provides maturity models for individual APIs and multi-API landscapes to help you invest the right human and company resources for the right maturity level at the right time. How do you balance the desire for agility and speed with the need for robust and scalable operations? Four experts from the API Academy show software architects, program directors, and product owners how to maximize the value of their APIs by managing them as products through a continuous life cycle. Learn which API decisions you need to govern and how and where to do so Design, deploy, and manage APIs using an API-as-a-product (AaaP) approach Examine ten pillars that form the foundation of API product work Learn how the continuous improvement model governs changes throughout an API’s lifetime Explore the five stages of a complete API product life cycle Delve into team roles needed to design, build, and maintain your APIs Learn how to manage your API landscape—the set of APIs published by your organization




Build APIs You Won't Hate


Book Description

API development is becoming increasingly common for server-side developers thanks to the rise of front-end JavaScript frameworks, iPhone applications, and API-centric architectures. It might seem like grabbing stuff from a data source and shoving it out as JSON would be easy, but surviving changes in business logic, database schema updates, new features, or deprecated endpoints can be a nightmare. After finding many of the existing resources for API development to be lacking, Phil learned a lot of things the hard way through years of trial and error. This book aims to condense that experience, taking examples and explanations further than the trivial apples and pears nonsense tutorials often provide. By passing on some best practices and general good advice you can hit the ground running with API development, combined with some horror stories and how they were overcome/avoided/averted. This book will discuss the theory of designing and building APIs in any language or framework, with this theory applied in PHP-based examples.