APIs are not forever, and eventually will go away. The trick with API deprecation is to communicate clearly, and regularly with API consumers, making sure they are prepared for the future. I’ve been tracking on the healthy, and not so healthy practices when it comes to API deprecation for some time now, but felt like Google had some more examples I wanted to add to our toolbox. Their approach to setting expectations around API deprecation is worthy of emulating, and making common practice across industries.
The Google Adwords API team is changing their release schedule, which in turns impacts the number of APIs they’ll support, and how quickly they will be deprecating their APIs. They will be releasing new versions of the API three times a year, in February, June and September. They will also be only supporting two releases concurrently at all times, and three releases for a brief period of four weeks, pushing the pace of API deprecation alongside each release. I think that Google’s approach provides a nice blueprint that other API provides might consider adopting.
Adopting an API release and sunset schedule helps communicate the changes on the horizon, but it also provides a regular rhythm that API consumers can learn to depend on. You just know that there will be three releases a year, and you have a quantified amount of time to invest in evolving integration before any API is deprecated. It’s not just the communication around the roadmap, it is about establishing the schedule, and establishing an API release and sunset cadence that API consumers can be in sync with. Something that can go a lot further than just publishing a road map, and tweeting things out.
I’ll add this example to my API deprecation research. Unfortunately the topic is one that is widely communicated around in the API space, but Google has long a strong player when it comes to finding healthy API deprecation examples to follow. I’m hoping to get to the point soon where I can publish a simple guide to API deprecation. Something API providers can follow when they are defining and deploying their APIs, and establish a regular API release and deprecation approach that API developers can depend on. It can be easy to get excited about launching a new API, and forget all about it’s release and deprecation cycles, so a little guidance goes a long way to helping API providers think about the bigger picture.
