Better APIs: Quality, Stability, Observability

This book is a practical guide to improving the quality, stability, and observability of your APIs. Through a combination of theoretical insights and a hands-on example project, you'll learn how to create and maintain production-grade APIs that meet high standards of excellence. Better APIs: Quality, Stability, Observability is designed for developers and architects who want to deepen their understanding of API development and ensure their APIs are reliable, maintainable, and easy to monitor.

APIs are the backbone of modern software architecture, and ensuring they are of high quality, stable, and observable is critical to the success of any software project. Better APIs: Quality, Stability, Observability provides you with the tools and knowledge to create APIs that meet these criteria, helping you avoid common pitfalls and ensuring your APIs can scale and evolve over time.

Among other things, you'll learn:

• How to build APIs that are well-architected, secure, and maintainable.
• Strategies for ensuring the stability of your APIs, allowing them to withstand external pressures and internal changes without compromising their core functionality.
• Techniques for enhancing observability, giving you the tools to monitor and understand your API's behavior in real-time, ensuring it's performing as expected.
• Practical methods for implementing continuous integration and deployment, automated testing, and proper documentation to support your API's lifecycle.
• How to apply these concepts to a real-world project, using the example of a fictional scenario to demonstrate best practices and common pitfalls.

Authored by Mikael Vesavuori, an experienced software architect and developer, this book is not just a theoretical exploration but a practical guide that will help you improve your API development practices.

Whether you're looking to refine your existing APIs or build new ones from scratch, Better APIs: Quality, Stability, Observability will provide you with the insights and techniques you need to succeed and create APIs that are not only functional but also robust, maintainable, and easy to monitor.

Quality

Learn how to implement processes and tools that ensure your APIs are built to high standards, including the use of continuous integration, test-driven development, and automated testing in CI environments.

Stability

Understand the importance of API schema validation, versioning, and lifecycle management to create APIs that are resilient and backward-compatible.

Observability

Explore how to implement effective logging, monitoring, and alerting mechanisms using modern observability tools, ensuring you can track and diagnose issues as they arise.

Workshop and Example Project

Follow along with a practical example that demonstrates how to apply the concepts discussed in the book to a real-world API scenario.

How the book is structured:

1. Introduction
   An overview of the key principles that guide the development of high-quality, stable, and observable APIs, with references to industry best practices and real-world examples.
2. Workshop
   Introducing a hands-on workshop that guides you through the process of building a robust API, complete with a scenario, assignment, and a detailed solution pitch.
3. Technical Components
   A deep dive description into the technical aspects of API development, including architecture diagrams, documentation practices, and weighing different approaches to API design and implementation.
4. Quality
   Detailed guidance on ensuring the quality of your APIs, covering topics such as continuous integration, test automation, and generating documentation.
5. Stability
   Strategies for ensuring the long-term stability of your APIs, including lifecycle management, API versioning, feature toggles, and canary deployments.
6. Observability
   Best practices for making your APIs observable, with a focus on logging, alerting, and ensuring your APIs are discoverable and well-documented. This section also covers additional observability techniques specific to AWS environments.
7. Tips and References
   A collection of additional resources and references to further your understanding of API development and related practices, along with practical tips for implementing what you've learned.