API Patterns Website Redesigned and Sample Book Chapter Available

Update (November 9, 2023): 19 of our API design patterns are also featured in online articles now. A story on Medium list them.

Update (Nov 22, 2023): The “API Design Pattern of the Week” series continued on Medium. An overview and listing of all nominees can be found here.

Update (Feb 17, 2023): I started an small article series called “API Design Pattern of the Week” on LinkedIn. It features Error Report this week. Week 1 had Wish List, and Week 2 was on Pagination. Comments welcome!

Update (Feb 7, 2023): Add Dot podcast available! Listen to Daniel Lübke and Vaughn Vernon discussing “Writing Patterns for API Design”.

Dec 1, 2022: “Patterns for API Design”, published by Addison Wesley Professional, now ships (both printed copies and eBooks). Sample content is available online, and we updated our API patterns website.

api-patterns.org

Five weeks ago our book was finally published. Since then, my co-author Mirko Stocker and I relaunched the supporting website under a new domain name that corresponds to the book title, api-patterns.org. We redesigned the site to improve navigation (all existing links should still work):

The menu at the top right takes you to a The Book landing page, to a Resources page that collects supplemental material (such as presentations and articles), to online Tutorials, to Patterns entry points (such as filter by scope and filter by desired quality) and to About the authors information. The Slide Show can be used in presentations and workshops.

We updated the overview figure on the home page and other content organization means according to the book structure and its terminology. The context, known uses and more information sections are from pre-book times, and the graphical solution sketches also are the intermediate versions that had been available online already.¹ The problem statements, forces and solution summaries do match those in the book though.²

Book Content Overview and Samples

Part 1 of the book features an introduction to API fundamentals, a domain model for APIs and a decision model identifying pattern selection questions, options and criteria (with six narratives guiding through the conceptual level of API design, with 29 recurring decisions). Part 2 presents the patterns in depth, grouping them into five theme categories. 30 of the 44 patterns in the book were peer-reviewed and previously published in papers (but updated and enhanced for the book):³

We focus on architectural roles taken by API endpoints and operation responsibilities, on request and response message content and structure as well as API evolution and (a bit of) contract governance. The two Forewords and rich sample content (Preface, Chapter 7, Index) can now be found at InformIT. The Table of Contents is also available on the book website.

InformIT also has a Web extra, the article “What is the Right Service Granularity in APIs?”. This article features two patterns from Chapter 7, Embedded Entity and Linked Information Holder.

The Vaughn Vernon Signature Series

We are proud members of the Vaughn Vernon Signature Series at Addison-Wesley Professional. Five books are available at the time of writing:

Read the Series Editor Foreword, available in the sample content, to learn more about the series. Frank Leymann wrote the external Foreword, available online too. Flattering!

Order Information and Praise

Some of the online stores that offer “Patterns for API Design” are:

• Amazon.com
• Amazon UK
• Amazon.de
• orell füssli Switzerland
• InformIT (Pearson)

The book managed to top the Newcomer Charts for Web Programming in the Amazon Kindle Store for about a week (on and off) after its release. It also made it to the number 1 spot of the Newcomers in Computer Systems Analysis & Design for a while. In the “über-category” Computer Science, its best position in New Releases that we observed was #4 (today, Dec 16) 😇.

Nine endorsements for the book appear on pages i, ii and iii of the book, right behind the cover (see, for instance, the sample content). Gregor Hohpe, Fabrizio Montesi and Tiago Boldt Sousa gave additional positive feedback on LinkedIn. Thank you so much everybody!

Wrap Up

Exciting times for pattern enthusiasts and architectural knowledge managers for sure. 😃

Let me end with a quote from the Preface:

“We hope you find the results of our efforts useful so that our patterns have a chance to find their way into the body of knowledge of the global community of integration architects and API developers. We will be glad to hear about your feedback and constructive criticism.”

– Olaf (in role of co-author of “Patterns for API Design”)

There is a Medium version of this post.