Upcoming REST API documentation workshop in Sacramento
Here is a description of the API workshop I’m giving in Sacramento:
Workshop on Documenting REST APIs
At its core, REST API documentation focuses on documenting requests and responses. You describe the various endpoints available, their methods, parameters, and other details. And you also document sample responses from the endpoints, usually describing each element and providing sample code.
In this workshop, you’ll learn the basics of REST API documentation. We’ll dive deeply into the following topics:
- Resource descriptions
- Endpoint definitions and methods
- Parameters
- Sample requests
- Sample responses
- Error codes
- Code samples
You’ll also learn about a few tools and technologies that are useful in working with and testing REST APIs. Some of these tools include the following:
- The command line
- Chrome’s Developer Console
- Postman REST client
- cURL
- JSON
With REST APIs, there’s not usually a GUI interface for users to navigate. Instead, the documentation itself provides the interface that users navigate. Because of this, we’ll also explore various ways to publish your API documentation. Here are a few platforms we’ll cover:
- Github
- Readme.com
- Jekyll
- Swagger
- RAML
This course will mostly provide an introduction to these concepts. There are many detailed examples and activities you can walk through with the API documentation tutorials on my site here: https://idratherbewriting.com/learnapidoc/
All participants in workshop will need the following:
- Text editor (such as Sublime Text)
- Postman REST client
- Chrome
- Git
- cURL
In addition to covering technical strategies for documenting REST APIs, we’ll also talk generally about the job market for developer documentation, the skills in demand, and challenges in working in developer environments.
You can find more information on the STC Sacramento site here.
Note that I’m also giving a similar API documentation workshop at the STC Summit in Anaheim, California in May (though the cost is 10 times as much).
If you’re interested in API documentation but can’t attend either of these events, you can get the same information from my site here: API documentation course.
About Tom Johnson
I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.
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