REST API NOTES FOR 2015/05/18
Nordic APIs last week and Gluecon this week - spring conference season continues to roll. So too does the important API information. Let's get right to who is moving API development in a positive direction.
SLIDES? SLIDES!
With conferences come slides. Several speakers at recent events have been kind enough to share their work. The first, by Ronnie Mitra, Director of API Design at CA API Academy, looks at complexity and how it applies to API design. If you like that, then you might also like his presentation on Rapido, A Sketching Tool for Web API Designers. Finally, for variety, Andrew Shafer has a holistic presentation on devops, microservices, and platforms, oh my!.
BUSINESS AS AN API
It is fascinating to read about how a company's management, in this case Quartz, articulates and champions an API. They've taken a "news-organization-as-API" approach. There are shades of NPR's Create-Once-Publish-Everywhere (COPE) strategy, but updated for a more screen-diverse world.
WHAT IS AN API DESIGNER?
Dave Goldberg, writing at apiary, has some important thoughts on the role of the API Designer. Much more than a job description, Dave's article goes into the challenges someone may encounter when building APIs within a enterprise.
QUANTIFYING API MATURITY
Finally, I wanted to end not with a new note, but an old one. Clear back in 2008 Leonard Richardson was struggling with various implementations of RESTful APIs. He wanted a way of quantifying API ability. His approach became known as the Richardson maturity model. Often references to this are casually tossed out by API practitioners with the assumption that it is universally understood. However, the original presentation, Justice will Take Us Millions of Intricate Moves, is a fantastic reminder of why we need this. It is also a great refresher before jumping into visual representations of hypermedia types by Mike Amundsen.
CONCLUSION
Before I wrap this up I first wanted to give a shout out to Travis, Bill, and the rest of the folks at Nordic APIs. They were kind enough to let me speak on the Seattle portion of their world tour last week and things went well. That team is building a treasure trove of important API references. I heartily recommend that you check it out.
Last week I also shared an illustrative example of what effective API Governance looks like. That piece raised some fantastic conversation within the API community. I've tried to capture as much as I could on Storify.
And, as always, if you want a kickstart to your RESTful API efforts, don't forget about REST API Tutorial. Written in a straightforward, step-wise manner, REST API Tutorial walks you through the major issues you'll encounter when creating your own API.