Summary

This chapter focused more on the things that you should consider when creating a new API than on the API code itself; this was a deliberate decision. These considerations include the following:

• Methods of securing your API from a completely open API, open for the world to use (and abuse), to the protected and authenticated server functioning over SSL with client-side certificates.

• The tradeoffs in choosing between utilizing REST and SOAP APIs from a server prospective was discussed briefly, along with additional considerations or functionality that should be made present to assist developers using the API.

• Considerations in assisting the development community.

• Managing the growth and evolution of your API.

• Proactively enabling error handing to help both you and your developers improve the overall usefulness of your web services.

• Deciding on the types of functions you may want to make available.

Finally, the chapter ended with example code for both REST and SOAP APIs. The REST coverage was slightly more exhaustive because a framework was developed from scratch, whereas the SOAP examples used the already robust NuSOAP framework.