Everyone is writing APIs from micro-services through to full applications, but what makes a good one? In this session we’ll look at five of the more important features that you should think about when creating an API. These are the features that ensure that your API plays well with HTTP and, more importantly, make your API a delight to maintain and work with. I want you to ensure that your API is a good HTTP citizen, while also providing developer-friendly features like thoughtful error handling and documentation. Give your API a competitive edge by making it sane so developers will want to work with it.

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Sean Wallis at 10:56 on 10 Jun 2017

Very clearly explained. Excellent responses to questions from someone that is very knowledgeable. Thank you very much Rob, I pledge to write better APIs.

Daniele at 11:02 on 10 Jun 2017

Great talk by someone who clearly has a lot of experience writing and interacting with APIs. Would have loved if he went a little bit more into details certain implementation choices and possibly different approaches for different cases (e.g. private APIs)

Jason Stanley at 13:02 on 10 Jun 2017

Great subject matter which was broken down into bite sized chunks and explained very clearly and concisely. Left me with some further reading. I enjoyed it a lot.

Wim Godden at 15:48 on 10 Jun 2017

Solid tips all the way

Katy Ereira at 20:21 on 10 Jun 2017

I came away with so many things to consider, and definitely will help me with developing APIs in the future. I also love Rob's presentation style; calm and informative but often amusing. :D

Tim Stamp at 21:02 on 10 Jun 2017

Some very insightful recommendations on good API design, many of which I will be practicing as soon as I get back to work.
Very much appreciated you sharing your experiences and recommendations on this.
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Chris Emerson at 22:44 on 10 Jun 2017

Loads to think about here when implementing an API - much of which seems obvious, but its so easy to fall into the habit of not doing things properly if you don't keep an eye on it!

Peter Fisher at 23:20 on 10 Jun 2017

Thank you for a clear set of API recommendations.
I will be reading some of those RFC's in the coming days

A well-crafted presentation on something which I guess needs to be well-crafted of itself. The questions afterwards were particularly well handled, I thought. I look forward to reading the RFCs!

Khanh Nguyen at 10:14 on 11 Jun 2017

Thanks for sharing

Chris Sherry at 12:03 on 11 Jun 2017

This talk is packed full of good advice and experience from Rob. The slides were excellent and content was well crafted.

My only criticism would be that the pace could be picked up a little - there were times of long pauses and I found my focus drifting more than I would have liked for the first talk of the day.

That said, a big thank you to Rob for standing in last minute to give this talk, and I enjoyed speaking to him in person in and around the conference.

Great talk, lots to think about when I next venture near the API...

Lee Stone at 12:56 on 11 Jun 2017

Firstly, I like the new slide style...
The talk itself was perfectly timed for me - we're quite early in the process of trying to design an API for our services and there is lots of information in here which I can now factor in to this.

Lee Boynton at 18:45 on 11 Jun 2017

I understand the talk had previously been given in a shorter duration, however I thought the pace of the talk was ok as this allowed time to think about what was being said.

It was good to know about the relevant RFCs, such as 7807. It would be interesting to know how they compare with the JSON API spec at http://jsonapi.org/format/

Gary Jones at 00:27 on 12 Jun 2017

I found the pace of the talk good and felt it was a slick presentation. Definitely aspects of this presentation I could use in current client work.

Naomi Gotts at 19:41 on 12 Jun 2017

Fantastic talk; well delivered, well structured, and really good timing for a project we are currently working on in the office. Writing this on Monday and have already used a few things learned from this talk on said project today.

Mark Dain at 20:52 on 12 Jun 2017

A great talk that was easy to follow and taught me a lot of things about HTTP and API design. Thank you for a fantastic talk!

Great talk. Lots of useful take aways, I might have to tweak a few APIs when I'm back in the office.

Neil Nand at 23:01 on 15 Jun 2017

Really good talk & made me think about some API design decisions in a different way.

A really good presentation, with a lot of good examples and tips.

James Titcumb at 11:01 on 16 Jun 2017

Well presented, great content. I learnt stuff, which is the right idea I suppose.

Marcus Deglos at 19:24 on 18 Jun 2017

Great explanation, with lots of actionable information. Really useful to see the RFCs referenced during the talk.
Very technology-agnostic; recommended viewing for anyone involved in designing or building an API.