Designing APIs for humans
summary
Recommends using short object ID prefixes (2–5 chars + underscore + random suffix) like org_abc123 to make IDs human-readable, avoid guessing, enable fast sharded lookups and one-string polymorphic lookups; gives concrete error rules — send the right HTTP code, be descriptive, be helpful, be empathetic — with an example where a 200 body saying error is replaced by a 404 customer_not_found response that includes which customer, a docs URL and a request ID header for instant debugging; argues for consistent, intuitive endpoints that don’t unset omitted fields.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (5)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:51Human-readable object IDs
- 9:59Better API error messages
- 17:41Human-centered API patterns
- 22:57Summary
