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
Key Features
- Understand the complete API product lifecycle, from planning to implementation, release, and maintenance
- Design and support API products that distinguish themselves on the market by meeting user needs
- Implement actionable techniques for developing, testing, and securing a successful API product
- Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook
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
Who this book is for
Building an API Product is a guide for product managers and software developers navigating the world of APIs to build programmable products. You don't have to be an experienced professional to learn from this book as long as you have basic knowledge of internet technologies and how users interact with a product.
Table of Contents
- What are APIs?
- API User Experience
- API-as-a-Product
- API Lifecycle
- Elements of API Product Design
- Identifying an API Strategy
- Defining and Validating an API Design
- Specifying an API
- Development Techniques
- API Security
- API Testing
- API Quality Assurance
- Deploying the API
- Observing API Behavior
- Distribution Channels
- User Support
- API Versioning
- Planning API Retirement
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 from 2013 to 2018.
