Bridging the gap: Mapping a domain model to a RESTful web API

Description

Doing business digitally means that having a web API has become a key asset for many companies. A web API, like a website, is a channel into the business domain. It extends a company’s business beyond traditional boundaries and can act as a true market differentiator. REST still is the de facto standard web architectural style for designing web APIs because of its constraints, such as interface uniformity, client-server decoupling, and adoption by the web network protocol HTTP that follows the REST web architectural style. REST with HTTP is based around resources accessed by simple HTTP operations to transfer resource state. REST resource modeling is therefore a key activity in the API development process and should get sufficient attention in order to get to a consumer-friendly and evolvable web API. However, there are a lot of myths around translating often complex business domain behavior to REST concepts; as a result, many organizations struggle to define an intuitive and consistent RESTful web API.

Tom Hofte and Marco van der Linder share practical solutions for modeling domain behavior to a RESTful API, based on DDD concepts and their own experiences in the field. Join in to get the opportunity to practice designing a REST API for a fictional case. You’ll leave with a better understanding of REST, applied design skills, practical solutions for complex domain to REST mappings and the choices to be made when designing an API .