

Ask HN: API Design? - thomasswift

I am interested in adding an official API to my site. Any links/tips/tricks/books? I'd rather take the time to make it close to right the first time, as opposing to break a bunch of things down the line. API Design is not my strong suit.<p>thanks
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JimEngland
Here is a useful set of links:

[http://neuroning.com/articles/2006/11/19/on-api-design-
guide...](http://neuroning.com/articles/2006/11/19/on-api-design-guidelines)

<http://lcsd05.cs.tamu.edu/slides/keynote.pdf>

It might be hard for us to try and help you out without knowing the project in
detail, but follow the guidelines of that Google Keynote and you should be
just fine.

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thomasswift
thanks, great links. I guess something similar to the tumblr api, which I have
been eyeing to model mine after, but with some differences.

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cmer
Here's the podcast of a talk I (and many others) gave on APIs at South by
Southwest. I think it provides some great guidelines.

[http://blog.carlmercier.com/2008/06/17/podcast-building-
deve...](http://blog.carlmercier.com/2008/06/17/podcast-building-developer-
friendly-web-service-apis/)

~~~
thomasswift
very cool thank you

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sh1mmer
Read the O'Reilly RESTful Web Services book. It's a great explanation of why
REST is good, and has a bunch of design patterns for the major pit falls.

You could also look at some of the tricks we use at Yahoo. One thing I think
is important is the way we handle JSON
(<http://developer.yahoo.com/common/json.html>).

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rsa
Here's a video from Joshua Bloch
<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design>

