What is an API and how do you design it? 🗒️✅

An API or application programmable interface is a software contract that defines the expectations and interactions of a piece of code exposed to external users. This includes the parameters, response, errors, and API name. We discuss how to design an API and what it takes to make the design scalable, extensible, and easy to use. HTTP APIs are widely used in software systems. HTTP is a stateless protocol, and systems often expose APIs using it. 00:00 Who should watch this? 00:13 What is an API? 01:41 Best Practices 02:22 Naming APIs 02:43 Define Parameters 03:29 Define Response Objects 05:02 Define Errors 06:22 HTTP Endpoints 07:47 GET vs. POST 09:10 Side Effects 12:09 Pagination 13:51 Data Consistency 15:11 Thank you! Recommended system design video course: https://interviewready.io Along with video lectures, this course has architecture diagrams, capacity planning, API contracts, and evaluation tests. It's a complete package. References: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/building-services-at-airbnb-part-1-c4c1d8fa811b https://swagger.io/docs/specification/about/ Designing Data-Intensive Applications - https://amzn.to/2yQIrxH System Design Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMCXHnjXnTnvo6alSjVkgxV-VH6EPyvoX You can follow me on: Facebook: https://facebook.com/gkcs0/ Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Gaurav-Sen-6 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaurav-sen-56b6a941/