API Best Practices

Designing a web API (or Application Programming Interface) that lives on a webserver can be very difficult. Not only must you be concerned with security, but also with working well with a clients that may be written in any number of other programming languages, running on who-knows-what platforms, possibly with slow or intermittant connectivity. You’ll also have to future-proof your API in such a way that you can safely upgrade it as you discover new things that it needs to do. In addition, you want to control how other parties use your API, so that they can’t damage the system. You also need to consider how you will handle things like errors, outages, and upgrading the system. All in all, there is a lot of stuff you need to consider in order to successfully build a new API that other people will use and that you can actually support.