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<h1>API Creation</h1>

<p>Creating and exposing APIs allows your web application to interact with other

applications through machine-to-machine communication.</p>

<h2>API creation frameworks</h2>

<ul>

<li>

<p><a href="http://www.django-rest-framework.org/">Django REST framework</a> and

<a href="https://django-tastypie.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Tastypie</a> are

the two most widely used API frameworks to use with Django. The edge

currently goes to Django REST framework based on rough community sentiment.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p><a href="http://flask-restful.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Flask-RESTful</a> and

<a href="http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/api/">Flask API</a> are popular libraries for

exposing APIs from Flask web applications.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p><a href="https://github.com/toastdriven/restless">Restless</a> is a lightweight API

framework that aims to be framework agnostic. The general concept is that

you can use the same API code for Django, Flask, Bottle, Pyramid or any

other WSGI framework with minimal porting effort.</p>

</li>

</ul>

<h2>API testing projects</h2>

<p>Building, running and maintaining APIs requires as much effort as building,

running and maintaining a web application. API testing frameworks are the

equivalent of browser testing in the web application world.</p>

<ul>

<li><a href="https://github.com/zatosource/zato-apitest">zato-apitest</a> invokes HTTP

APIs and provides hooks for running through other testing frameworks.</li>

</ul>

<h2>Hosted API testing services</h2>

<ul>

<li>

<p><a href="https://www.runscope.com/">Runscope</a> is an API testing SaaS application

that can test both your own APIs and external APIs that your application

relies upon.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p><a href="https://www.apiscience.com/">API Science</a> is focused on deep API testing,

including multi-step API calls and monitoring of external APIs.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p><a href="http://smartbear.com/api-testing/">SmartBear</a> has several API monitoring

and testing tools for APIs.</p>

</li>

</ul>

<h2>API creation resources</h2>

<ul>

<li>

<p><a href="http://www.narwhl.com/">NARWHL</a> is a practical API design site for

developers confused about what is appropriate for RESTful APIs.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p>This <a href="https://github.com/interagent/http-api-design">API Design Guide</a>

is based on Heroku's best practices for the platform's API.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p><a href="http://pydanny.com/choosing-an-api-framework-for-django.html">Choosing an API framework for Django</a>

by <a href="https://twitter.com/pydanny">PyDanny</a> contains questions and insight

into what makes a good API framework and which one you should currently

choose for Django.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/Solution4Future/python-restful-webservices-with-python-flask-and-django-solutions">RESTful web services with Python</a>

is an interesting overview of the Python API frameworks space.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/jmusser/ten-reasons-developershateyourapi">10 Reasons Why Developers Hate Your API (And what to do about it)</a>

goes through the top difficulties and annoyances developers face when

working with APIs and how you can avoid your API falling into the same

traps.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p>"<a href="https://medium.com/@zwacky/design-a-beautiful-rest-api-901c73489458">Design a beautiful REST API</a>"

reviews common design decisions regarding endpoints, versioning, errors and

pagination. There is also a

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WXYw4J4QOU">source material YouTube video</a>

where this blog post derives its recommendations from.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p>"<a href="http://www.bizcoder.com/self-descriptive-isn-t-don-t-assume-anything">Self-descriptive, isn't. Don't assume anything.</a>"

is an appeal that metadata makes a difference in whether APIs are descriptive

or not.</p>

</li>

</ul>

<h2>API creation learning checklist</h2>

<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>

Pick an API framework appropriate for your web framework. For Django I

recommend Django REST framework and for Flask I recommend Flask-RESTful.</p>

<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>

Begin by building out a simple use case for the API. Generally the use case

will either involve data that users want in a machine-readable format or a

backend for alternative clients such as an iOS or Android mobile app.</p>

<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>

Add an authentication mechanism through OAuth or a token scheme.</p>

<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>

Add rate limiting to the API if data usage volume could be a performance issue.

Also add basic metrics so you can determine how often the API is being

accessed and whether it is performing properly.</p>

<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>

Provide ample documentation and a walkthrough for how the API can be accessed

and used.</p>

<p><i class="fa fa-check-square-o"></i>

Figure out other use cases and expand based on what you learned with the

initial API use case.</p>

<h3>What's next after building an API for your web app?</h3>

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<a href="/introduction.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Introduction</a>

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<a href="/api-integration.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">API Integration</a>

<a href="/api-creation.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item active">API Creation</a>

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<a href="/about-author.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">About the Author</a>

<a href="/change-log.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Change Log</a>

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