TOP 15 Mistakes Developers Make When Creating Web APIs

In the world of web development, APIs are the backbone of modern applications. But let’s be honest, building a flawless Web API isn’t as easy as it sounds. If you're a developer who's ever felt overwhelmed by API-related chaos, you're not alone. I’ve been there too.

In this candid eBook, I walk you through the 15 common mistakes I made while building Web APIs in C#. These mistakes cost me time, energy, and sometimes, whole projects. From poor design choices to missing security practices, this guide covers everything you need to avoid when you're diving into the world of Web APIs.

What’s Inside:

• The Dangers of Ignoring Proper HTTP Status Codes – Why returning a 200 OK for every response is a disaster.
• Versioning Your API – How skipping versioning can break your API in the future.
• Exposing Sensitive Data – How I accidentally exposed user passwords and how you can avoid it.
• Handling Performance Issues – The mistake of returning massive amounts of data and why pagination is crucial.
• Proper HTTP Methods – Why GET should never be used for mutations, and what you should use instead.
• Avoiding Synchronous Bottlenecks – How to optimize your API performance using asynchronous calls.
• Config Management – Why hardcoding your settings is a rookie mistake, and how to fix it.
• Input Validation – The risk of letting unchecked data into your API and how to validate it properly.
• Exception Handling – How to avoid stack trace leaks and create proper error handling mechanisms.
• Authentication Failures – Why reinventing the wheel for authentication is a terrible idea, and why you should use JWTs.
• CORS Misconfigurations – How to properly set up Cross-Origin Resource Sharing to prevent frontend failures.
• Dependency Injection – The importance of decoupling your code for better testing and maintainability.
• Data Efficiency – Why you should never return more data than necessary and the magic of DTOs.
• Logging API Requests – How logging can save you hours of debugging and frustration.
• API Documentation – The importance of writing clear and comprehensive API docs (or else!).