Everything I know about good API design
17 days ago
- #Best Practices
- #Software Development
- #API Design
- Good API design balances familiarity and flexibility, aiming to be 'boring' to minimize user confusion.
- APIs are hard to change once published, so careful initial design is crucial to avoid breaking userspace.
- Versioning is a last resort for API changes, allowing old and new versions to coexist but adding complexity.
- The success of an API depends more on the underlying product's value than on the API's design quality.
- Poor product design can lead to awkward APIs, as APIs often reflect the structure of the underlying resources.
- Authentication should support simple API keys to accommodate non-engineers, alongside more secure options like OAuth.
- Idempotency keys are essential for safe retries of actions, especially for high-stakes operations like payments.
- Rate limiting and safety mechanisms are necessary to prevent abuse and ensure API stability.
- Cursor-based pagination is preferred for large datasets to avoid performance issues with offset-based pagination.
- Optional fields can make APIs more efficient, but GraphQL may be overkill for many use cases.
- Internal APIs differ from public ones, with more flexibility in changes and authentication, but still require careful design.