How to build an API your developers will love (Short Version) - MuCON 2015, London by Michael Kuehne

In the last years API spread out around the world. Every modern application provides or consumes at least one API. It became very easy to setup an API, but it became even easier to build APIs no one really wanted to use. To provide an API is not a unique selling point anymore.

Especially if you are providing a public API, your API should be so user friendly that your mom could use it or at least an inexperienced developer who never used an API before.

As an independent software engineer Michael has worked with various clients designing, building, testing, maintaining and even redesigning private and public APIs; starting from a simple API for Single-Page-Application to a highly scalable and complex kickass API serving millions of users every day.

In this talk Michael will share his experience from these projects giving some guidelines on API design and answering some questions which occur in every API project like "How can we provide this operation and still being RESTful?" or "How should we version our API?". Besides an admirable API Design Testing, Documentation and Mocking are always sticking points, which Michael wants to demystify by sharing his handy approach to creating an awesome developer experience.

With this talk you will be inspired to apply some of these techniques in your next API project.

Transcript

1. How to build an API your developers will love? Michael Kuehne
2. Michael Kuehne Independent Software Engineer API Specialist
3. Why should you build an API your developers will love?
4. Your API is a Product
5. Create a Developer Experience User Scenarios & User Stories Personas
6. Don‘t forget these Guys
7. UX UX Honeycomb
8. Useful to me vs. Userful by Design
9. End users create value
10. Long-Term Mindset Consistency
11. RESTful Naming
12. V1 Versioning
13. Publish your Tests Provide Stubs Error Messages
14. SDKs Dev Dashboard Sandbox
16. Documentation Communication
17. HATEOAS Extend Responses
18. Reliable APIs Legal Part
19. „An API is a Journey Not a destination“ John Musser
20. Thank you and start creating API your Developers will love! Michael Kuehne michael@mkuehne.com @michikuehne
21. Credits •  Stormtropper with Heart https://flic.kr/p/7CMCXh •  Apple Stormtropper https://flic.kr/p/8pxp41 •  Logo Quad Racer https://flic.kr/p/dXan4x •  Business man https://flic.kr/p/9ahi5b •  See in the Mountains https://flic.kr/p/bDg5Ms •  Leathermen https://flic.kr/p/7BMTj9 •  Traffic Sign https://flic.kr/p/4uZDqS •  Hello my name is https://flic.kr/p/7NudQf •  LED https://flic.kr/p/eQy2Um •  Toolbox https://flic.kr/p/bkSP2c •  Chocolate https://flic.kr/p/eMKxsK •  Boy Scouts https://flic.kr/p/cdxFkW •  Wheel chair https://flic.kr/p/9g1LDE •  Church https://flic.kr/p/opTHCA •  Kayak https://flic.kr/p/bSaLKB