Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are computing interfaces that dictate how calls are made, the responses sent, data formats used, and the conventions followed when applications are communicating and sharing data with each other. Due to this, they have evolved to become among the most important software development components that developers use today.
illustration by Blaze Pollard
When it comes to the design of the APIs, developers need to be very careful and make sure that they have observed a set of regulations that help in making their APIs successful. Even though some developers might think that they are building APIs to be used by other developers who might be knowledgeable enough on the operations of APIs, it is important to make sure that the APIs they build are easy to understand and use.
For instance, if a developer is looking to implement an API that collects information about all the hotels available in a certain city, but the API they get is not easy to use, chances are that they will look for another API that they can customize to include their functionalities. API users do not want to spend a lot of time learning about an API. They can spend that time working on their applications and implementing other APIs that are easy to use.
Effective API Design
Every API user wants to use an API that meets all their requirements. Similarly, every API developer wants to build an API that is easy to use and meets the requirements of their APIs. To do that, developers follow a number of API design guidelines, among them;
1. Consistency and Stability
One of the most important things that API developers should enforce is the consistency of their APIs. An effective API design should, among other things, ensure that common parameters are handled globally within an API. It should also enforce a shared architecture and inheritance to have the same data handling and naming conventions used consistently throughout the API design.
Stability is also as important as consistency. You might have come across poorly designed APIs that are rewritten or deprecated every now and then. This is one issue that affects the rate of adoption of APIs, not unless the API is offered by a company with millions of established users. For instance, you need to add the version numbers of your API to its URL. This assures your API users that they can rely on a certain version while at the same time working on upgrading to a newer version.
2. Documentation
Most developers hate writing documentation more than anything else when building APIs. However, as an API developer, one should put themselves into the shoes of the API users. With this, an API developer will realize that it is more difficult to use an API that lacks documentation than writing the documentation itself. Writing API documentation makes life easy for any developer who implements your API.
For effective API design, API developers should first document the methods of their APIs first. This includes examples of responses as well as requests while describing the elements in both the requests and responses. To make this easier, API developers can choose from a number of tools that simplify and facilitate the auto-generation of API documents. It is important to always make sure that the documentation exposes your API, its functions, and endpoints.
3. Security
Effective API design ensures that there are clear examples showing how authorization and authentication are used within an API. However, as much as security is very important to an API, some developers make it quite difficult to use and understand. API users should not have to spend hours understanding how security features are implemented within an API. As an API developer, you should make sure that your API users do not have to write any code, or maybe take a few minutes if they have to write any code related to the security of your API.
4. Flexibility
Finally, API developers should make sure that they build flexible APIs. For instance, most developers do not know what their API users will want in the API. They do not know the kind of support they (API users) have with their data formats. This means that the APIs should be flexible in a way for them to accommodate what the API users have. They should also be easy to use, and should not require writing a lot of code for them to meet the requirements of the resources that the users have.
Conclusion
API developers need to make sure that they are building APIs that are easy to use and that meet the requirements of their users. This is because the future of any business depends on technological development, something that is being fueled by APIs today. They can do that by assuming that they are not just the API developers, but users as well. This way, they will see the API from the users’ perspective, making it easy for them to build effective APIs.
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