It’s time to make an announcement that I’ve been holding back for a while: I’m working on a book! The name of the book is “Designing APIs with Swagger and OpenAPI”. I’m co-authoring the book with Josh Ponelat, a developer for SmartBear software, the maintainers of the Swagger suite of OpenAPI tools. Manning Publications release the book, and it’s already available as a live preview on MEAP, the Manning Early Access Program.

As I joined the project as a co-author later when Josh had already worked on and published some chapters individually, I wanted to wait to announce my co-authorship until Manning added the first of my work to MEAP. They did it last week, so I’m now happy to make this post.

I’ve done a bit of technical writing for clients and my projects and blogs, and I work on API documentation as a freelancer, but all of that is short-form writing such as articles and tutorials. A technical book is a challenge on another level because you have to have an overarching idea of the material that you want to teach and then plan how to present the material. It’s an excellent opportunity to learn and improve as a writer and experience a professional publishing process. I gladly accepted that challenge when Manning contacted me and asked me if I wish to join the project.

The book is for everyone who wants to get into designing APIs. The first part of the book explains the basics of APIs and the OpenAPI specification. The second part, which we’ve started to publish now, walks through an API Design First web application project with a fictional development team. Together we’re going from idea collection through domain modeling and user stories to a well-designed API in CRUD style that connects frontend and backend of the web application. We’re also exploring the ways to implement this design as code and the challenges along the way. The third part of the book will extend and scale this project’s API, and the fourth part covers various advanced OpenAPI and API life cycle topics. Josh and I are eagerly working on these parts, and we’re looking forward to delivering the full book to you as soon as possible.

You can preorder the book “Designing APIs with Swagger and OpenAPI” on Manning’s website now, get immediate access to MEAP and receive a full ebook or physical book later.