Learning API Styles: Understanding the Trade-Offs of Common APIs and Choosing the Correct Solutions

Lukasz Dynowski, Marcin Dulak

When developing a service, whether it’s a web service or a microservice, an application programming interface (API) is essential for facilitating data exchange. In this hands-on book, authors Lukasz Dynowski and Marcin Dulak show software developers, engineers, and architects how to design and implement APIs for specific use cases—including RESTful APIs, GraphQL APIs, WebSocket APIs, webhook APIs, gRPC APIs, and messaging protocols.

You’ll learn how to determine the appropriate type of API for your application use case and how to tackle design decisions along the way. You’ll also learn the trade-offs between various APIs and acquire practical knowledge of how to implement them.

Explore the origins and evolution of API styles
Learn the core network protocols that various APIs use
Determine which encoding to use for your API
Select an appropriate API style
Understand the trade-offs of each API style
Learn how to implement, secure, and document various API styles
Inspect network packets exchanged between APIs