Web APIs

Master REST API design, authentication, security, and modern API patterns for production systems

Learn to design, build, and secure production-grade APIs. This course covers RESTful design principles, authentication strategies (JWT, OAuth2), API security best practices, documentation with OpenAPI, WebSockets for real-time communication, GraphQL fundamentals, and API versioning strategies. Build APIs with Python (FastAPI/Flask) that scale from prototype to millions of users with confidence.

What You'll Master

🎯
RESTful API Design

Design intuitive, scalable APIs following REST principles and industry best practices

🔐
Authentication & Security

Implement JWT, OAuth2, and protect your APIs from common vulnerabilities

📚
API Documentation

Create comprehensive OpenAPI specs with interactive Swagger documentation

⚡
Performance & Caching

Optimize API response times with rate limiting, caching, and compression

🔄
Real-Time Communication

Build WebSocket connections for chat, notifications, and live updates

🧪
Testing & Monitoring

Ensure reliability with comprehensive testing and production observability

Why Learn API Development?

APIs are the backbone of modern software. Whether you're building mobile apps, microservices, or integrating third-party systems, understanding API design and implementation is essential. This course teaches you the patterns and practices used by companies like Stripe, Twilio, and GitHub to build APIs that developers love. You'll learn not just how to build APIs, but how to build them right, secure, performant, well-documented, and maintainable.

Start Building APIs: REST Fundamentals
Master REST design principles and build your first API!

Course Index

  1. REST API Design Fundamentals
    Core principles, resource modeling, HTTP semantics, and status codes
  2. Building Your First API with FastAPI
    Project setup, routes, path operations, and auto-generated docs
  3. ASGI vs WSGI: Web Server Interfaces
    Understanding WSGI and ASGI protocols, async capabilities, and when to use each
  4. API Request and Response Design
    Request/response patterns, pagination, filtering, versioning strategies
  5. Authentication and Authorization
    JWT, OAuth2, API keys, RBAC, and scope-based permissions
  6. API Security Best Practices
    OWASP Top 10, input validation, CORS, HTTPS, and secret management
  7. Error Handling and Validation
    Status codes, error responses, validation, and idempotency patterns
  8. API Documentation with OpenAPI
    OpenAPI specs, Swagger UI, ReDoc, and interactive documentation
  9. Rate Limiting, Caching, and Performance
    Rate limiting algorithms, HTTP caching, Redis, and optimization
  10. Webhooks and Event-Driven APIs
    Webhook patterns, HMAC signatures, retry logic, and event delivery
  11. Real-Time APIs with WebSockets
    WebSocket protocol, authentication, scaling, and use cases
  12. GraphQL Fundamentals
    GraphQL vs REST, queries, mutations, and when to use each
  13. API Versioning and Evolution
    Versioning strategies, backward compatibility, and deprecation
  14. Testing and Monitoring APIs
    Unit testing, load testing, monitoring, tracing, and observability
  15. gRPC and Protocol Buffers
    gRPC fundamentals, protobuf schemas, streaming, and REST vs gRPC
  16. Deployment & DevOps for APIs
    Docker, CI/CD, blue-green deployments, canary releases, and feature flags
  17. Serverless APIs
    AWS Lambda, Cloud Functions, Azure Functions, and cold start optimization
  18. API Gateway & Service Mesh
    AWS API Gateway, Kong, Apigee, Istio, BFF pattern, and API composition
  19. API Analytics & Usage Tracking
    Usage tracking, billing, dashboards, power users, and cost attribution
  20. Database Integration Patterns
    Connection pooling, transactions, read replicas, and repository pattern
  21. Background Jobs & Async Processing
    Celery, RQ, job queues, 202 Accepted pattern, retries, and monitoring
  22. File Upload & Download Patterns
    Multipart uploads, streaming, S3 integration, validation, and virus scanning
  23. Pagination Deep Dive
    Advanced pagination strategies for scalable, high-performance APIs
  24. Building a Production API (Capstone Project)
    End-to-end project building a task management API with authentication

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