So it’s hard not to see the closure of the Netflix API, on top of the closure of all the other APIs, as symbolic in its own way—of a new era of the web that is less concerned with outreach, and more concerned with consolidation. A web controlled by companies that prefer their own way of doing things, without external input. A web that takes the productive enthusiasms of independent developers and says, essentially, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
RESTful API Design: Teach a Dog to REST
While many claim REST has arrived, many APIs in the wild exhibit arbitrary, productivity-killing deviations from true REST. In this presentation, I start with a typical poorly-designed API and iterate it into a well-behaved RESTful API. Check out the presentation (with audio!) below for rules and advice on how to do REST right, including handling complex variations, pagination and API versioning.