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Patterns for API Design: Simplifying Integration with Loosely Coupled Message Exchanges, 1st edition

Published by Addison-Wesley Professional (November 8, 2022) © 2023

  • Olaf Zimmermann
  • Mirko Stocker
  • Daniel Lubke
  • Uwe Zdun
  • Cesare Pautasso

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As thousands of developers focus on constructing reliable, well-performing, and secure APIs, there's immense demand for a practical, up-to-date, technology-and-platform-independent guide to API design. Patterns for API Design: Simplifying Integration with Loosely Coupled Message Exchanges fills this gap. A team of expert authors cut through the complexity of API communication and message content, presenting rich and complete design guidelines and heuristics for engineering APIs sustainably and specifying them clearly.

Patterns for API Design: Simplifying Integration with Loosely Coupled Message Exchanges covers the entire API lifecycle, from launching projects and establishing business goals through defining architecturally significant requirements, elaborating and implementing designs, and documentation. It illuminates patterns drawn from both public web APIs and proprietary application development and software integration projects the authors have led or participated in. You'll find a complete library of concrete, actionable design patterns, each formatted consistently to explain context, forces, problem, solution, discussion, and known uses.

Throughout, the authors share practical insights for making better design decisions and tradeoffs, facilitating easier implementation, and structuring and designing higher-quality APIs to meet both short- and long-term needs. You'll learn how to:

  • Facilitate better API design discussions by establishing a common vocabulary, identifying key decisions, and comparing realistic options
  • Simplify design reviews and accelerate objective comparisons
  • Plan to smoothly evolve and extend APIs without compromising backward-compatibility
  • Enhance documentation with useful design knowledge to help client developers quickly grasp API capabilities and constraints, and confidently use your APIs

Foreword by Vaughn Vernon, Series Editor     xvii

Foreword by Frank Leymann     xxi

Preface     xxiii

 

Part 1: Foundations and Narratives     1

Chapter 1: Application Programming Interface (API) Fundamentals     3

     From Local Interfaces to Remote APIs     3

     Decision Drivers in API Design     14

     A Domain Model for Remote APIs     22

     Summary     28

 

Chapter 2: Lakeside Mutual Case Study     31

     Business Context and Requirements     31

     Architecture Overview     35

     API Design Activities     39

     Target API Specification     39

     Summary     41

 

Chapter 3: API Decision Narratives     43

     Prelude: Patterns as Decision Options, Forces as Decision Criteria     43

     Foundational API Decisions and Patterns     45

     Decisions about API Roles and Responsibilities     57

     Selecting Message Representation Patterns     70

     Interlude: Responsibility and Structure Patterns in the Lakeside Mutual Case     82

     Governing API Quality     84

     Deciding for API Quality Improvements     98

     Decisions about API Evolution     110

     Summary     122

 

Part 2: The Patterns     125

Chapter 4: Pattern Language Introduction      127

     Positioning and Scope     128

     Patterns: Why and How?     130

     Navigating through the Patterns     131

     Foundations: API Visibility and Integration Types     137

     Basic Structure Patterns     146

     Summary     158

 

Chapter 5: Define Endpoint Types and Operations     161

     Introduction to API Roles and Responsibilities     162

     Endpoint Roles (aka Service Granularity)     167

     Operation Responsibilities     215

     Summary     248

 

Chapter 6: Design Request and Response Message Representations     253

     Introduction to Message Representation Design     253

     Element Stereotypes     256

     Special-Purpose Representations     282

     Summary                                                 305

 

Chapter 7: Refine Message Design for Quality  309

     Introduction to API Quality     309

     Message Granularity     313

     Client-Driven Message Content (aka Response Shaping)     325

Message Exchange Optimization (aka Conversation Efficiency)     344

Summary     355

 

Chapter 8: Evolve APIs     357

Introduction to API Evolution     357

Versioning and Compatibility Management     362

Life-Cycle Management Guarantees     374

Summary     393

 

Chapter 9: Document and Communicate API Contracts     395

Introduction to API Documentation     395

Documentation Patterns     398

Summary     421

 

 

Part 3: Our Patterns in Action (Now and Then)     423

Chapter 10: Real-World Pattern Stories     425

Large-Scale Process Integration in the Swiss Mortgage Business     426

Offering and Ordering Processes in Building Construction     438

Summary     445

 

Chapter 11: Conclusion     447

Short Retrospective     448

API Research: Refactoring to Patterns, MDSL, and More     449

The Future of APIs     450

Additional Resources     451

Final Remarks     451

 

Appendix A: Endpoint Identification and Pattern Selection Guides     453

Appendix B: Implementation of the Lakeside Mutual Case     463

Appendix C: Microservice Domain-Specific Language (MDSL)     471

 

Bibliography     483

Index     499

Olaf Zimmermann is professor of software architecture at the Institute for Software at Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, Distinguished IT Architect at The Open Group, and co-editor of IEEE Software's Insights column. Mirko Stocker is professor of software engineering at Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, specializing on Web development and cloud solutions. Daniel Lübke is an independent coding and consulting architect who specializes in business process automation and digitization projects. Uwe Zdun is professor of software architecture at the University of Vienna, focusing on distributed systems engineering, DevOps, patterns, modeling, and empirical software engineering. Cesare Pautasso is a professor at the Università della Svizzera Italiana, where he leads the Architecture, Design, and Web Information Systems Engineering research group. The authors are active community members participating in pattern writer's workshops, shepherding other authors, serving on program committees, and chairing conferences.

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