A Practical Guide to Designing APIs
In this whitepaper, you’ll learn:
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- Why APIs should be designed independently from backend systems
- How to identify stakeholder needs before defining an API
- How quality, information, and behavior influence API usability
- The differences between platform APIs and service APIs
- Which common API anti-patterns lead to instability and breaking changes
Table of Contents
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- Introduction — Why APIs must be treated as long-term business and technical contracts rather than extensions of backend systems
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- Approaches to API Design — How quality, information, and behavior shape stable, usable, and consumer-focused APIs
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- Platform APIs vs. Service APIs — Understanding the differences between reusable data APIs and APIs built for specific business use cases
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API Anti-Patterns — Common design practices that create unnecessary coupling, frequent changes, and broken interfaces
- Conclusion — How stakeholder understanding and a change in perspective lead to reliable, developer-friendly APIs
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