Building an API Product

Design, implement, release, and maintain API products that meet user needs

Bruno Pedro 지음

Packt(GCO Science) 2024년 01월 25일 출간

작품소개

책소개

Unlock the power of APIs with expert guidance and techniques for successfully creating, testing, and maintaining products that align with customers and stand out in the market

▶Book Description
The exponential increase in the number of APIs is evidence of their widespread adoption by companies seeking to deliver value to users across diverse industries, making the art of building successful APIs an invaluable skill for anyone involved in product development. With this comprehensive guide, you’ll walk through the entire process of planning, designing, implementing, releasing, and maintaining successful API products.
You’ll start by exploring all aspects of APIs, including their types, technologies, protocols, and lifecycle stages. Next, you’ll learn how to define an API strategy and identify business objectives, user personas, and jobs-to-be-done (JTBD). With these skills, you’ll delve into designing and validating API capabilities to create a machine-readable API definition. As you advance, the book helps you understand how to choose the right language and framework for securely releasing an API server and offers insights into analyzing API usage metrics, improving performance, and creating compelling documentation that users love. Finally, you’ll discover ways to support users, manage versions, and communicate changes or the retirement of an API.
By the end of this API development book, you’ll have the confidence and skills to create API products that truly stand out in the market.

▶ What You Will Learn
⦁ Master each stage of the API lifecycle
⦁ Discover technologies and protocols employed in building an API product
⦁ Understand the different API design definition and validation techniques
⦁ Generate an API server from a machine-readable definition
⦁ Understand how to set up and analyze API monitors
⦁ Familiarize yourself with the different gateways for releasing an API
⦁ Find out how to create an API portal that attracts users
⦁ Gain insights into planning and communicating API retirement to users

목차

▶ TABLE of CONTENTS
1. What are APIs?
2. API User Experience
3. API-as-a-Product
4. API Lifecycle
5. Elements of API Product Design
6. Identifying an API Strategy
7. Defining and Validating an API Design
8. Specifying an API
9. Development Techniques
10. API Security
11. API Testing
12. API Quality Assurance
13. Deploying the API
14. Observing API Behavior
15. Distribution Channels
16. User Support
17. API Versioning
18. Planning API Retirement

책 속으로

▶ What this book covers
⦁ Chapter 1, What Are APIs?, introduces you to API fundamentals, origins, and types such as REST, gRPC, AMQP, and MQTT.
⦁ Chapter 2, API User Experience, explores how the API user experience is vital, second-degree experience, and the impact of friction on success.
⦁ Chapter 3, API as a Product, outlines an API as a standalone product, emphasizing business value, monetization options, support, documentation, and crucial security.
⦁ Chapter 4, API Life Cycle, provides an overview of the API life cycle stages, covering design, implementation, release, and maintenance, offering an opinionated approach to API product management.
⦁ Chapter 5, Elements of API Product Design, introduces you to the key API product design stages, connecting ideation, strategy, definition, validation, and specification, paving the way for an in-depth exploration.
⦁ Chapter 6, Identifying an API Strategy, analyses the strategy stage of API design, emphasizing identifying stakeholders, determining business objectives, and understanding user personas and behaviors.
⦁ Chapter 7, Defining and Validating an API Design, covers the techniques for defining and validating API design, starting with strategy-derived information and exploring API mocks, UI integration, and stakeholder iteration.
⦁ Chapter 8, Specifying an API, guides you on how to select an API architectural type based on behaviors and capabilities, refining the definition with constraints and industry practices and creating a machine-readable representation with governance rules.
⦁ Chapter 9, Development Techniques, offers a beginner-friendly guide to API development, covering language and framework selection, code generation from specifications, prototyping, and extending with business logic,
⦁ Chapter 10, API Security, explores API security, emphasizing its importance, distinguishing between authentication and authorization, and introducing a security testing technique called fuzzing.
⦁ Chapter 11, API Testing, introduces you to API testing methods, covering contract testing to ensure specification compliance, performance testing execution, and the connection of acceptance testing to user personas.
⦁ Chapter 12, API Quality Assurance, covers API quality assurance, introducing behavioral testing to validate against identified behaviors and setting up API monitors for periodic testing.
⦁ Chapter 13, Deploying the API, provides an overview of the API deployment process, covering continuous integration, agility, automated testing, deployment, and API gateway trade-offs.
⦁ Chapter 14, Observing API Behavior, introduces you to API usage analytics, APM, and user feedback analysis to identify and measure important metrics, usage patterns, and behavior.
⦁ Chapter 15, Distribution Channels, covers API distribution strategies, including pricing, API portals, marketplace listing, and documentation options to enhance user activation.
⦁ Chapter 16, User Support, delves into ways to ensure user success with an API, covering support channels, forums, and prioritizing bug fixes and feature requests from user feedback.
⦁ Chapter 17, API Versioning, explores techniques for managing multiple API versions, handling breaking changes effectively, and communicating changes to users using machine-readable methods.
⦁ Chapter 18, Planning API Retirement, discusses API retirement, covering its definition, considerations, and communication to users and conducting a retrospective to document what you have learned from the process.

출판사 서평

▶ Preface
Building an API Product is a comprehensive guide that ranges from the fundamentals of APIs and their inner workings to mastering the steps involved in building successful API products. With this book, you will be able to confidently and effectively create cutting-edge API products that excel in today’s competitive market.

작가정보

저자(글) Bruno Pedro

Bruno Pedro is a computer science professional with over 25 years of experience in the industry. Throughout his career, he has worked on a variety of projects, including internet traffic analysis, API backends and integrations, and web applications. He has also managed teams of developers and founded several companies, including Tarpipe, an iPaaS, in 2008, and the API Changelog in 2015. In addition to his work experience, Bruno has also made contributions to the API industry through his written work, including two published books on API-related topics and numerous technical magazine and web articles. He has also been a speaker at numerous API industry conferences and events since 2013.