APIs and Endpoints
What rule must hold even when someone bypasses the interface, repeats a request, or receives an external-service error? Document each important endpoint's purpose, input, permissions, result, and failure responses.
What You Will Be Able to Decide
- Explain apis and endpoints in product and business terms.
- Apply this decision: Document each important endpoint's purpose, input, permissions, result, and failure responses.
- Recognise this material risk: loosely defined endpoints expose data or behave differently for similar requests.
- Use this review: Trace one support request from submission to stored status, including a duplicate click and a provider timeout.
A founder is reviewing how the product will enforce rules and respond when a request does not go to plan. This lesson gives you a concrete question to take into a build brief, proposal review, or product decision.
What rule must hold even when someone bypasses the interface, repeats a request, or receives an external-service error? The course example is A service that lets customers submit and track support requests; use it to decide what evidence would justify the choice before a builder implements it.
What Does APIs and Endpoints Mean for Your Product?
A founder is reviewing how the product will enforce rules and respond when a request does not go to plan.
Use the illustrative service for this course (A service that lets customers submit and track support requests) to make the choice concrete. What rule must hold even when someone bypasses the interface, repeats a request, or receives an external-service error?
Technical term
APIs and Endpoints
An API is a defined way for software systems to communicate; an endpoint is a specific address and operation within that interface.
How Should a Founder Use APIs and Endpoints?
For a service that lets customers submit and track support requests, ask what would happen if loosely defined endpoints expose data or behave differently for similar requests.
For this decision, the useful standard is that important rules hold for valid, invalid, repeated, and unauthorised requests.
- Decision: Document each important endpoint's purpose, input, permissions, result, and failure responses.
- Evidence to request: show that important rules hold for valid, invalid, repeated, and unauthorised requests.
- Owner: name who will respond if loosely defined endpoints expose data or behave differently for similar requests.
- Record the result in the backend proposal and operational acceptance criteria.
- Practical review: Trace one support request from submission to stored status, including a duplicate click and a provider timeout.
How Do You Choose an Approach to APIs and Endpoints?
What rule must hold even when someone bypasses the interface, repeats a request, or receives an external-service error? Document each important endpoint's purpose, input, permissions, result, and failure responses.
The risk is that loosely defined endpoints expose data or behave differently for similar requests. Compare a simpler option with the proposed one, including who will operate either choice.
- Describe the user or business outcome that must be protected.
- Identify the most credible failure and its consequence.
- Compare the simplest adequate approach with one realistic alternative.
- Set a review point for when the decision may need to change.
What Evidence Should You Accept for APIs and Endpoints?
What Warning Signs Should You Look For?
- The proposal does not address this risk: loosely defined endpoints expose data or behave differently for similar requests.
- Nobody can show whether important rules hold for valid, invalid, repeated, and unauthorised requests.
- The decision has no named owner or review point.
What Should You Ask a Consultant?
- What changes for the user if we choose this approach to apis and endpoints?
- How have we reduced or accepted this risk: loosely defined endpoints expose data or behave differently for similar requests.
- Can you demonstrate that important rules hold for valid, invalid, repeated, and unauthorised requests?
- Who owns the result, and when will we reconsider it?
Key takeaway
Key Takeaway
Document each important endpoint's purpose, input, permissions, result, and failure responses. Ask for evidence against the specific risk: loosely defined endpoints expose data or behave differently for similar requests.