Ask HN: API Design?

11 points by thomasswift 18y ago ↗ HN

I am interested in adding an official API to my site. Any links/tips/tricks/books? I'd rather take the time to make it close to right the first time, as opposing to break a bunch of things down the line. API Design is not my strong suit.

thanks

6 comments

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JimEngland 18y ago ↗

Here is a useful set of links:

http://neuroning.com/articles/2006/11/19/on-api-design-guide...

http://lcsd05.cs.tamu.edu/slides/keynote.pdf

It might be hard for us to try and help you out without knowing the project in detail, but follow the guidelines of that Google Keynote and you should be just fine.

thomasswift 18y ago ↗

thanks, great links. I guess something similar to the tumblr api, which I have been eyeing to model mine after, but with some differences.

cmer 18y ago ↗

Here's the podcast of a talk I (and many others) gave on APIs at South by Southwest. I think it provides some great guidelines.

http://blog.carlmercier.com/2008/06/17/podcast-building-deve...

thomasswift 18y ago ↗

very cool thank you

rsa 18y ago ↗

Here's a video from Joshua Bloch http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design

sh1mmer 18y ago ↗

Read the O'Reilly RESTful Web Services book. It's a great explanation of why REST is good, and has a bunch of design patterns for the major pit falls.

You could also look at some of the tricks we use at Yahoo. One thing I think is important is the way we handle JSON (http://developer.yahoo.com/common/json.html).