APIDesigns

APIDesigns refers to the discipline of designing application programming interfaces. It denotes both theoretical principles and practical guidelines intended to make APIs usable, reliable, and scalable. While not a formal standard, APIDesigns is used in documentation and education to describe best practices for API construction and maintenance. Some organizations also use the term as branding for consultancy services or design tools, but there is no single governing body.

Core principles include consistency in naming and behavior, resource-oriented design, predictable and semantic endpoints, proper use of HTTP methods, stateless interactions, clear versioning, robust error handling, security and authentication (such as OAuth and API keys), rate limiting and quotas, data formats and backwards compatibility, and observability through metrics, logging, and tracing. Documentation and client generation are commonly supported by OpenAPI or Swagger specifications.

Process and governance aspects of APIDesigns often involve requirements gathering, API-first or contract-first development approaches, design reviews, and style guides to ensure reuse and standardization across teams. Tooling commonly used in this context includes OpenAPI, Swagger UI, Postman, and API gateways to facilitate design, testing, and deployment.

Impact and scope of APIDesigns cover improvements in developer experience, adoption rates, time to market, and long-term maintenance costs. It intersects with software architecture, security considerations, and data modeling. The approach is applicable to both public web APIs and internal microservice ecosystems. Potential criticisms include the risk of over-standardization limiting innovation and debates over optimal versioning strategies.

See also REST, OpenAPI, GraphQL.