GSA’s new 18F digital services agency has released a first version of its API standards for agencies that want to develop their own APIs, intended to provide high-level design guidance as well as lower level web practices in use by most modern HTTP APIs.
The API standards comprise a set of recommendations and guidelines for API production covering user-facing implementation details, while attempting to prescribe a goal instead of a specific technology, where possible, GSA said.
For example, one practical guideline is to provide an obvious point of contact to an API’s producer. GSA said ittried to remain technology-neutral but makes exception in certain areas. For example the standards do not allow for the use of JSONP, which skirts the Javascript same-origin policy by allowing cross-domain DOM manipulation.
18F(named for its location at 18th and F in Northwest Washington DC) says it based its standards on the White House’s own API standards, and invited others to fork the 18F API standards, found here: https://github.com/18F/api-standards