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<!DOCTYPE html>

<title>API Creation - Full Stack Python</title>

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<span class="logo-title"><a href="/">Full Stack Python</a></span>

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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.

Django REST framework recently hit the

<a href="http://www.django-rest-framework.org/topics/3.0-announcement/">3.0 release mark</a>

after Tom Christie ran a

<a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tomchristie/django-rest-framework-3">successful Kickstarter campaign</a>.</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="http://www.github.com/jeffknupp/sandman">Sandman</a> is a widely used tool to

automatically generate a RESTful API service from a legacy database without

writing a line of code (though it's easily extensible through code).</p>

</li>

<li>

<p><a href="https://cornice.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">Cornice</a> is a REST framework

for Pyramid.</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>

<li>

<p><a href="http://python-eve.org/">Eve</a> is a Python REST framework built with Flask,

MongoDB and Redis. The framework's primary author

<a href="https://twitter.com/nicolaiarocci">Nicola Iarocci</a> gave a great talk at

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sUsLvG72_o">EuroPython 2014</a> that

introduced the main features of the framework.</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://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>Versioning of RESTful APIs is a difficult and contentious topic in the

web API community. This two-part series covers

<a href="http://urthen.github.io/2013/05/09/ways-to-version-your-api/">various ways to version your API</a>

and <a href="http://urthen.github.io/2013/05/16/ways-to-version-your-api-part-2/">how to architect a version-less API</a>.</p>

</li>

<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><a href="http://blog.luisrei.com/articles/flaskrest.html">Implementing a RESTful Web API with Python & Flask</a>

is a straightforward introduction to using Flask to create request

handling and responses to produce a web API.</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="https://18f.gsa.gov/">18F</a>'s

<a href="https://github.com/18f/api-standards">API standards</a> explains the details

behind their design decisions on creating modern RESTful APIs.</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://amberonrails.com/move-fast-dont-break-your-api/">Move Fast, Don't Break Your API</a>

are slides and a detailed blog post from Amber Feng at Stripe about

building an API, separating layers of responsibility, hiding backwards

compatibility and a whole slew of other great advice for developers

and API designers.</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>

<li>

<p><a href="http://artsy.github.io/blog/2014/09/12/designing-the-public-artsy-api/">Designing the Artsy API</a>

has their recommendations list for building an API based on their recent

experiences.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p><a href="https://bourgeois.me/rest/">Some REST Best Practices</a> is a high level

summary of rules to follow while creating your API.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p>Hacker News had a discussion on

<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8912897">what's the best way to write an API spec?</a>

that provides a few different viewpoints on this topic.</p>

</li>

<li>

<p><a href="https://pages.apigee.com/rs/apigee/images/api-design-ebook-2012-03.pdf">Apigee's Web API Design ebook</a>

is free and contains a wealth of practical advice for what design

decisions to make for your web API.</p>

</li>

</ul>

<h2>API creation learning checklist</h2>

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

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

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>

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

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>

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

and used.</p>

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>

What are application programming interfaces?

</p>

</div>

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How do I integrate external APIs into my application?

</p>

</div>

How can I learn about web application security?

</p>

</div>

Where should I host static content such as JavaScript files?

</p>

</div>

</div> <div id="mc_embed_signup">

<h4>Interested in major updates to this site or an alert when a complete Full Stack Python book with detailed example code is released? Sign up here and you'll an occasional email only when there's big news to report.</h4>

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<h3 class="panel-head"><a href="/table-of-contents.html" style="color: #fff;">Table of Contents</a></h3>

</div>

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

<a href="/why-use-python.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Why Use Python?</a>

<a href="/development-environments.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Development Environments</a>

<a href="/best-python-resources.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Best Python Resources</a>

<a href="/web-frameworks.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Web Frameworks</a>

<a href="/django.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Django</a>

<a href="/flask.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Flask</a>

<a href="/bottle.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Bottle</a>

<a href="/pyramid.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Pyramid</a>

<a href="/morepath.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Morepath</a>

<a href="/other-web-frameworks.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Other Web Frameworks</a>

<a href="/web-design.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Web Design</a>

<a href="/cascading-style-sheets.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Cascading Style Sheets</a>

<a href="/javascript.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">JavaScript</a>

<a href="/websockets.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">WebSockets</a>

<a href="/web-application-security.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Web Application Security</a>

<a href="/databases.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Databases</a>

<a href="/no-sql-datastore.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">NoSQL Data Stores</a>

<a href="/application-programming-interfaces.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Application Programming Interfaces</a>

<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>

<a href="/deployment.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Deployment</a>

<a href="/servers.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Servers</a>

<a href="/platform-as-a-service.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Platform-as-a-service</a>

<a href="/operating-systems.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Operating Systems</a>

<a href="/web-servers.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Web Servers</a>

<a href="/wsgi-servers.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">WSGI Servers</a>

<a href="/source-control.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Source Control</a>

<a href="/application-dependencies.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Application Dependencies</a>

<a href="/static-content.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Static Content</a>

<a href="/task-queues.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Task Queues</a>

<a href="/configuration-management.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Configuration Management</a>

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

<a href="/logging.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Logging</a>

<a href="/monitoring.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Monitoring</a>

<a href="/web-analytics.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Web Analytics</a>

<a href="/docker.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Docker</a>

<a href="/caching.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Caching</a>

<a href="/code-metrics.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Code Metrics</a>

<a href="/what-full-stack-means.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">What "Full Stack" Means</a>

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

<a href="/future-directions.html" class="list-group-item smaller-item ">Future Directions</a>

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

</div>

<div class="panel-heading"><h3 class="panel-head">API Creation</h3></div>

Need more detailed tutorials and walkthroughs than you see here?

<a href="/email.html">Sign up for an email alert when that content is created.</a>

<hr/>

<a href="/">Full Stack Python</a> is an open book that explains

concepts in plain language and provides the most helpful resources

on those topics.

<hr/>

<a href="http://twitter.com/mattmakai">Matt Makai</a> built

this site with appreciated assistance from

<a href="https://github.com/makaimc/fullstackpython.github.com/pulls">pull requests</a>.

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</div></div>

<hr/>

<a href="http://www.mattmakai.com/" class="underline">Matt Makai</a>

2015

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