API Evolution (Page 22)

Writings about API Design, OpenAPI, HTTP and related topics.

REST Agent - Lessons learned in building generic hypermedia clients

Several years ago when I was beginning to work on a large hyper media driven client, I recognized frequently recurring patterns and decided that I could raise the level of abstraction from an HTTP client to a hypermedia client.  It took about a year to realize that it was not as good an idea as I had first thought.

Read more...

Composing API responses for maximum reuse with ASP.NET Web API

In Web API 2.1 a new mechanism was introduced for returning HTTP messages that appeared to be a cross between HttpResponseMessage and the ActionResult mechanism from ASP.NET MVC.  At first I wasn't a fan of it at all.  It appeared to add little new value and just provide yet another alternative that would a be a source of confusion.  It wasn't until I saw an example produced by Brad Wilson that I was convinced that it had value.

Read more...

An HTTP Resource is a lot simpler than you might think

Unfortunately, I still regularly run into articles on the web that misunderstand the concept of an HTTP resource.  Considering it is a core piece of web architecture, having a clear understanding of what it means can make many other pieces of web architectural guidance considerably easier to understand.

Read more...