Looking for the big picture of building APIs? This book is for you! Building APIs that consumers love should certainly be the goal of any API initiative. However, it is easier said than done. It requires getting the architecture for your APIs right. This book equips you with both foundations and best practices for API architecture. This book is for you if you want to understand the big picture of API design and development, you want to define an API architecture, establish a platform for APIs or simply want to build APIs your consumers love. This book is NOT for you, if you are looking for a step-by step guide for building APIs, focusing on every detail of the correct application of REST principles. In this case I recommend the book "API Design" of the API-University Series. What is API architecture? Architecture spans the bigger picture of APIs and can be seen from several perspectives:

API architecture may refer to the architecture of the complete solution consisting not only of the API itself, but also of an API client such as a mobile app and several other components. API solution architecture explains the components and their relations within the software solution.
API architecture may refer to the technical architecture of the API platform. When building, running and exposing not only one, but several APIs, it becomes clear that certain building blocks of the API, runtime functionality and management functionality for the API need to be used over and over again. An API platform provides an infrastructure for developing, running and managing APIs.
API architecture may refer to the architecture of the API portfolio. The API portfolio contains all APIs of the enterprise and needs to be managed like a product. API portfolio architecture analyzes the functionality of the API and organizes, manages and reuses the APIs.
API architecture may refer to the design decisions for a particular API proxy. To document the design decisions, API description languages are used. We explain the use of API description languages (RAML and Swagger) on many examples.

This book covers all of the above perspectives on API architecture. However, to become useful, the architecture needs to be put into practice. This is why this book covers an API methodology for design and development. An API methodology provides practical guidelines for putting API architecture into practice. It explains how to develop an API architecture into an API that consumers love. A lot of the information on APIs is available on the web. Most of it is published by vendors of API products. I am always a bit suspicious of technical information pushed by product vendors. This book is different. In this book, a product-independent view on API architecture is presented. The API-University Series is a modular series of books on API-related topics. Each book focuses on a particular API topic, so you can select the topics within APIs, which are relevant for you.

想了解构建API的全貌？这本书是为你准备的! 构建消费者喜爱的API当然应该是任何API计划的目标。然而，这说起来容易做起来难。它需要为你的API制定正确的架构。本书为你提供了API架构的基础和最佳实践。如果你想了解API设计和开发的全貌，你想定义一个API架构，为API建立一个平台，或者只是想建立你的消费者喜欢的API，这本书就适合你。如果你正在寻找一个逐步建立API的指南，关注正确应用REST原则的每一个细节，那么这本书就不适合你。在这种情况下，我推荐API-University系列的《API设计》一书。什么是API架构？架构跨越了API的大局，可以从几个角度来看。

API架构可以指完整的解决方案的架构，它不仅包括API本身，还包括API客户端，如移动应用和其他一些组件。API解决方案的架构解释了软件解决方案中的组件和它们的关系。

API架构可能指的是API平台的技术架构。在构建、运行和公开不仅是一个，而且是多个API时，很明显，API的某些构件、运行时功能和API的管理功能需要被反复使用。一个API平台为开发、运行和管理API提供一个基础设施。

API架构可能指的是API组合的架构。API组合包含企业的所有API，需要像产品一样进行管理。API组合架构分析了API的功能，并对API进行组织、管理和再利用。

API架构可能指的是特定API代理的设计决策。为了记录设计决策，API描述语言被使用。我们在许多例子上解释了API描述语言（RAML和Swagger）的使用。

本书涵盖了上述所有关于API架构的观点。然而，为了变得有用，架构需要被付诸实践。这就是为什么本书涵盖了设计和开发的API方法论。API方法论提供了将API架构付诸实践的实用指南。它解释了如何将API架构发展成消费者喜爱的API。很多关于API的信息都可以在网上找到。其中大部分是由API产品的供应商发布的。我对产品供应商推送的技术信息总是有些怀疑。这本书则不同。在这本书中，提出了一个与产品无关的关于API架构的观点。API-University系列是一个关于API相关主题的模块化系列图书。每本书都专注于一个特定的API主题，因此你可以选择API中与你相关的主题。