Part 1

Foundations and Narratives

The three chapters in Part 1 prepare you to make the best use of Patterns for API Design. Chapter 1, “Application Programming Interface (API) Fundamentals,” introduces basic API concepts and motivates why remote APIs are important and rather hard to design well. This chapter sets the stage for the following ones.

Chapter 2, “Lakeside Mutual Case Study,” introduces a fictitious case study from the insurance domain that supplies running examples for the book. The systems of Lakeside Mutual feature our patterns in action.

Chapter 3, “API Decision Narratives,” gives an overview of the patterns in the form of decisions required. (The patterns are then covered in depth in Part 2.) Each decision answers an API design question; the patterns provide the solution alternatives (options). Examples of decision outcomes from the Lakeside Mutual case are given as well. The decision model presented in this chapter can help you organize your API design work and/or serve as a checklist in API design reviews.