api-standards

One piece of 18F that I've always appreciated is their published API standards - https://github.com/18F/api-standards. They spawned it off the frequently mentioned White House API standards, and it phrases a lot of the opinions well without being preachy. But more than anything else, this made me feel like there are real humans behind 18F. So I wish them all the best and hope this article (and ones like it) falls into the camp of "Haters gotta hate" and just inspires them to find more visible success.

That's a great question. At 18F, we <3 APIs[0][1][2][3][4][5]. Not only are we big believers ourselves, but we strive to help other agencies improve their API practices. [0] https://github.com/18F/api-standards [1] https://github.com/18F/jekyll_pages_api [2] https://github.com/18F/API-All-the-X and http://18f.github.io/API-All-the-X/ [3] https://github.com/18F/api.data.gov [4] https://github.com/18F/fbopen [5] https://github.com/18f/?query=api etc, etc

At 18F (a digital services consultancy within the US federal government), we've drafted API Standards[1]. They're a set of recommendations, rebuttable presumptions, and bright line rules that we expect our APIs to adhere to. For an organization that may offer several APIs, having a set of standards will help ensure, among other things, baseline quality and consistency. [1] https://github.com/18f/api-standards

Thanks for the detailed reply! I turned this into an issue on our GitHub repo here: https://github.com/18F/api-standards/issues/45.

If you'd like to elaborate in a way that would be highly visible to 18F, feel free to weigh in on the issues page[1]. I will point out that JSON is recommended as a default, and if there is a compelling reason not to use it in a specific case, that should be fine[2]. [1] https://github.com/18f/api-standards/issues or https://github.com/18F/api-standards/issues/8 [2] https://github.com/18F/api-standards#just-use-json

It's really great to see this on HN. Major kudos should go to Eric Mill, Gray Brooks, and everyone else who contributed[1] to these standards (as well as the White House, whose API standards 18F forked[2]). There is a blog post[3] that further explains 18F's goals for these standards, as well as a bit on how 18F evaluates what becomes a standard and what does not. These were discussed out in the open, and meaningful feedback, suggestions, or pull requests are certainly welcome. [1] https://github.com/18F/api-standards/blame/master/README.md [2] https://github.com/WhiteHouse/api-standards [3] http://18fblog.tumblr.com/post/91868213233/hot-off-the-press...

There is a discussion on documentation in one of the issues[1]. Feel free to weigh in! [1] https://github.com/18F/api-standards/issues/19