The Design of Web APIs, Second Edition

An API defines how a program exposes its operations, features, and capabilities to other programs—and the kind of data it can send and receive from them. Well-designed APIs are a joy to use. Bad APIs are a nightmare, with endless impact on system performance, developer productivity, and your end-user experience.

Stop shipping “just-works” endpoints that barely function and leave developers frustrated. Many APIs are built quickly without fully considering how users interact with them, how they scale, or how they evolve over time. What if you could design APIs that developers praise for their clarity, users trust for their consistency, and businesses rely on for growth? By following proven methods for requirement analysis, security, and usability, you can build interfaces that are easier to adopt, maintain, and expand without costly rewrites.

• Requirement analysis framework: turns fuzzy feature lists into clear, testable API capabilities.

• HTTP-based patterns: apply CRUD, batch, and long-running operations without performance surprises.

• Consumer-first mindset: design flows that feel intuitive, boosting adoption and support metrics.

• Security and efficiency checks: catch vulnerabilities early, protect data, and control latency.

• Compatibility toolkit: modify APIs confidently while avoiding painful breaking changes.

• Future-proof versioning strategies: evolve services, keep clients happy, and cut rewrite costs.

The Design of Web APIs by renowned API expert Arnaud Lauret offers a proven, step-by-step playbook for REST API success. It distills years of real-world governance experience into practical guidance any developer can use.

Through an engaging Online Shopping case study and banking scenarios, Lauret shows how to balance business goals with technical constraints. Each chapter layers new design tools—requirement gathering, interoperability checks, security controls—building a complete, reusable workflow.

Finish the book able to architect APIs that are clear, consistent, and adaptable. Your endpoints will be easier to document, simpler to test, and far cheaper to maintain.

Ideal for developers who have consumed or built basic APIs and now must design robust, long-lived services.