The API World has changed a lot since 2014, and keeping the original book up-to-date with blog posts and bonus chapters in the ebook is only holding off the inevitable for so long.

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So far, this feels like how the book is gonna play out:

• Part One: Theory

  • APIs, Services, and Microservices
  • Understanding Different Paradigms
  • Input and Output
  • Success and Failure
  • API Contracts
  • Design Theory
    • Resources
    • Collections
    • Serialization
    • Deserialization
    • Pagination
    • Filtering
    • Caching
  • Validation
  • Hypermedia Controls (HATEOAS)
    • Layers of abstraction on top of RPC
    • Next available actions
    • Standards (JSON:API, HAL, etc.)
  • HTTP/1, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3
    • HTTP/2 is a real world thing today use it
    • Lets Stop Building Around a Network Hack
  • Asynchronous Methodologies
    • Long Polling
    • Web Hooks (a.k.a Callbacks)
    • WebSockets
    • Message Brokers (AMQP, Kafka, etc.)
  • Authentication
  • Security
  • Horror Stories
    • Deadly Faith In Strangers (The Keycard Troubles of 2016)
    • Stampeding Herds
    • Denial of Service Attacking Yourself
    • Firing Data into Blackholes

• Part Two: Planning & Design

  • Editors
  • Mocking
  • Documentation
  • Style Guides

• Part Three: Building & Testing

  • Building Blocks
  • Debugging
  • Traffic Inspection
  • Integration Testing
  • Contract Testing
  • End to End / Acceptance Testing
  • Health Checks
  • Load Testing
  • Testing in Production
  • Notes on Deployment

• Part Four: Management & Experience

  • Portals & Documentation
  • API Gateways
  • Gateway Validation
  • Rate Limiting
  • Analytics
  • Governance (Speccy / Specteral / Stoplight)
  • Deprecation
  • Versioning & Evolution

• Part Five: Further Theory

  • Picking Paradigms
  • Common Architectures
    • GraphQL as a Monolith
    • REST wrapping Microservices
    • Backend for Frontends (BFFs)

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