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  • Book Overview & Buying Building an API Product
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Building an API Product

Building an API Product

By : Bruno Pedro
4.9 (7)
Buy this Book
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Building an API Product

Building an API Product

4.9 (7)
By: Bruno Pedro
Buy this Book

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
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Preface
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Preface
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Who this book is for
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What this book covers
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Download the example code files
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Conventions used
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Get in touch
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Share Your Thoughts
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Download a free PDF copy of this book
1
Part 1:The API Product
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Part 1:The API Product
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2
Chapter 1: What Are APIs?
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Chapter 1: What Are APIs?
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The different types of APIs
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The history of APIs
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Available technologies and protocols
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Summary
3
Chapter 2: API User Experience
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Chapter 2: API User Experience
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Who uses APIs?
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Developer experience
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Second-degree user experience
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API friction
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Summary
4
Chapter 3: API-as-a-Product
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Chapter 3: API-as-a-Product
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Business value
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Monetization models
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Support and documentation
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Security
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Summary
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Chapter 4: API Life Cycle
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Chapter 4: API Life Cycle
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Design
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Implementation
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Release
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Maintenance
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Summary
6
Part 2:Designing an API Product
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Part 2:Designing an API Product
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Chapter 5: Elements of API Product Design
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Chapter 5: Elements of API Product Design
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Technical requirements
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Ideation
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Strategy
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Definition
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Validation
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Specification
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Summary
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Chapter 6: Identifying an API Strategy
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Chapter 6: Identifying an API Strategy
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The meaning of strategy
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Stakeholders
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Business objectives
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Personas
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Behaviors
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Summary
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Chapter 7: Defining and Validating an API Design
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Chapter 7: Defining and Validating an API Design
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Technical requirements
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API capabilities
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API mock
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Prototyping an API integration with a UI
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Design iterations
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Summary
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Chapter 8: Specifying an API
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Chapter 8: Specifying an API
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Technical requirements
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API specification formats
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Creating a machine-readable API definition
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Following API governance rules
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Summary
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Part 3:Implementing an API Product
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Part 3:Implementing an API Product
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Chapter 9: Development Techniques
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Chapter 9: Development Techniques
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Technical requirements
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Prototyping an API
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Popular languages for building APIs
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Generating server code from a specification
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Summary
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Chapter 10: API Security
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Chapter 10: API Security
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What is API security?
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Authentication
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Authorization
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Summary
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Chapter 11: API Testing
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Chapter 11: API Testing
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Contract testing
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Performance testing
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Acceptance testing
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Summary
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Chapter 12: API Quality Assurance
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Chapter 12: API Quality Assurance
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Defining QA
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Behavioral testing
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Regression testing
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API monitoring
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Summary
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Part 4:Releasing an API Product
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Part 4:Releasing an API Product
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Chapter 13: Deploying the API
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Chapter 13: Deploying the API
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Continuous integration
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Choosing an API gateway
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Summary
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Chapter 14: Observing API Behavior
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Chapter 14: Observing API Behavior
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API usage analytics
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Application performance monitoring
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User feedback
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Summary
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Chapter 15: Distribution Channels
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Chapter 15: Distribution Channels
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What is API distribution?
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Pricing strategy
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API portal
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Community
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Marketplaces
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Documentation
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Summary
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Part 5:Maintaining an API Product
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Part 5:Maintaining an API Product
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Chapter 16: User Support
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Chapter 16: User Support
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Helping users get their jobs done
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Support channels
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Prioritizing bugs and feature requests
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Summary
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Chapter 17: API Versioning
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Chapter 17: API Versioning
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Technical requirements
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Managing multiple API versions
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Breaking changes
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Communicating changes
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Summary
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Chapter 18: Planning for API Retirement
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Chapter 18: Planning for API Retirement
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When should you retire an API?
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Communicating API retirement
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API product retrospective
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Summary
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Index
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Index
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Why subscribe?
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Other Books You May Enjoy
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Other Books You May Enjoy
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Packt is searching for authors like you
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Share Your Thoughts
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Download a free PDF copy of this book

What Are APIs?

APIs are the most powerful technology available today. While the API acronym can be deceitfully simple, the concept it describes offers infinite possibilities. Welcome to the world of APIs, where you’ll learn how to build an API product. Your first step in this expedition is to first learn what an API is. In this chapter, you will understand the nature of APIs, looking back to their origins. You’ll also get to know which technologies and tools are available for you to use.

The chapter begins by exploring different types of networks, such as the internet, and how APIs work on them. You will then be guided through the history of APIs. You’ll see how APIs came to life and understand how certain concepts in use today were born. Finally, you’ll see that there are different technologies and tools that you can use to build an API product from scratch.

By the end of this chapter, you will know that APIs can exist on different types of networks. You will understand what those networks are and what the most appropriate one for your API product is. You will also know that there are synchronous and asynchronous APIs and what those terms mean. Most importantly, you will know how to pick the right type of API and tools to build your API.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

  • The different types of APIs
  • The history of APIs
  • Available technologies and protocols
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Programming languages
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