Translating API Design into HTTP

How to create well-defined HTTP API specifications

The critical element in prototyping is to turn our original API design into a valid HTTP design. We need to convert the list of properties and actions from our ALPS description into a well-defined HTTP API specification. This is where the magic happens—the art of translation. We use the word art because there is no science or engineering that can properly convert our design into a protocol-specific definition. We still need to rely on creative people to do this work. That’s why sketching and prototyping can be so handy. It lets us work out decisions quickly and easily without a lot of expense.

It’s also important to point out that we’ll be using an HTTP API as our target implementation. We won’t be using an event-driven React API, a query-driven GraphQL API, or a function-driven gRPC API. This decision to create an ...