Welcome to eCG API Guidelines’s documentation!¶
These documents describes the guidelines that new APIs in ECG MUST adhere to.
The sources of these guidelines are in Ebay’s Github.
Why?¶
The reason for these guidelines can be summarized by:
There is no time to quickly build an API.
APIs are a weird thing. Unlike our webapps they need to be stable for a long time. Your customers will give up after the n th incompatible change. Your coders will give up after having to hack in the n th feature.
These guidelines make sure that the API you develop has a clear backward-compatible path towards change and growth. Adhering to the guidelines makes it possible to work agile again. In addition, the guidelines makes a small selection from the large number of available standards. This allows us to share ideas, and perhaps eventually code, across eCG.
These guidelines grew from experience and frustration at Marktplaats. Now they are mandated for new self-build APIs across eCG.