API Design Fundamentals: Building with REST and GraphQL

Every modern application relies on APIs to share data and power seamless user experiences. Designing these interfaces requires a solid understanding of architectural patterns, security, and developer usability. This text-based course guides you through the core principles of API design, comparing and implementing both REST and GraphQL architectures. You will transition from understanding basic HTTP requests to designing robust, production-ready APIs that developers love to use. What you'll learn: - Understand the core differences, strengths, and use cases of REST and GraphQL architectures - Design clean RESTful resources, endpoints, and standard HTTP method mappings - Create flexible GraphQL schemas, queries, mutations, and resolve data efficiently - Apply modern API best practices, including versioning strategies and rate limiting - Document your APIs professionally using OpenAPI specification standards - Address common performance challenges, such as the N+1 query problem in GraphQL You will start with foundational terminology, learning how data moves across the web. From there, you will progress through structured text lessons and written design exercises that explore real-world API scenarios, authentication basics, and schema design. This course is designed for beginner developers, software students, and product managers who want to understand API design from the ground up. No prior API development experience is required. Start reading today to build the foundation for modern web communication.