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Modern REST API Development in Go
Modern REST API Development in Go

Modern REST API Development in Go: Design performant, secure, and observable web APIs using Go's powerful standard library

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Profile Icon Jesús Espino
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$44.99
Paperback Aug 2025 294 pages 1st Edition
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Arrow left icon
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Paperback Aug 2025 294 pages 1st Edition
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Modern REST API Development in Go

Exploring REST APIs

A REST API can be simple or complicated, have thousands of different resources with millions of entities, or expose only one resource with a few entities. Every developer can decide how to use query parameters, HTTP headers, and HTTP verbs. Nothing is written in stone here because REST provides the guiding principles, but the developer always makes the final decision.

For this reason, it’s essential to have the right tools and resources to understand an API properly before consuming it, as well as the right tools to explore and investigate how to use that API in real life.

This chapter will explore three tools I consider the bread and butter of any API user:

  • OpenAPI: The OpenAPI documentation defines our REST API, declaring the resources, entities, and operations we can perform on each resource, as well as the authentication mechanism; everything is exposed in OpenAPI.
  • Postman: Postman is one of the most popular applications for...

Technical requirements

We won’t be writing any code in this chapter; instead, we’ll explore an API using the methods mentioned previously. To do so, we’ll need to have Postman and curl installed. We’ll also need to create a free account in Postman so that we can use the application to its fullest potential.

OpenAPI

OpenAPI is a standard from the OpenAPI Initiative that describes HTTP APIs and is the de facto standard for REST APIs.

It imparts a detailed description of all the URLs, methods, parameters, resources, entities, and serialization mechanisms available while also providing examples of how to use the API in code.

In this section, we’ll explore the basic shape of OpenAPI and the main things you need to look at to understand an API. However, we won’t get into the details of the OpenAPI format. Instead, I’ll help you understand an API through its OpenAPI documentation.

We’ll explore how to document APIs using OpenAPI in Chapter 11.

For now, let’s talk more about the OpenAPI file and its format.

The OpenAPI file

The OpenAPI file is a YAML Ain’t Markup Language (YAML) file containing general API information and a list of paths. Each path represents a URL in your API; you can have a set of accepted methods for that URL...

Postman

Postman is an HTTP client specially designed to consume APIs. It’s the de facto standard in the industry to explore and try APIs with a graphical interface. It’s compatible with OpenAPI and allows us to explore APIs but also interact with them directly there.

In this section, we’re going to explore the basic usage of Postman and give you a sneak peek at its potential. We’ll start by importing an API definition, studying it, and interacting with it by sending a request.

So, let’s start by installing the tool and importing an API.

Importing an API

You can download and install Postman locally from https://www.postman.com/downloads/ or directly from their web page at https://web.postman.co. It works perfectly fine in both cases, but you should consider using the installable application for local development.

One of the fantastic things about Postman is that it comes with many already existing APIs that are easy to incorporate...

curl

curl is the Swiss Army knife of REST API testing. It can build any request you need with the headers and parameters you want, all in a compact and easy-to-use CLI. If you don’t have it installed on your system, you can use your system package manager or follow the instructions at https://curl.se/.

If you’re like me and prefer to interact with the command line, you’ll love curl (and you probably already know it). Not only that, but curl is used everywhere and is supported by a lot of applications, so it isn’t rare to have curl command-line examples in API documentation that provide support for extracting curl calls from places such as the Web Developers Tools of Firefox and Chrome in the Network tab, allowing you to reproduce network calls in your command line by copy and pasting.

In this section, we’ll explore using the curl command to send requests and get information such as headers in the response.

Getting information

The...

Summary

In this chapter, we explored different ways to understand APIs better. First, we looked at using OpenAPI to get information on what we can do and how to use an API. We can explore APIs in read-only and “map” fashion using the YAML format or the OpenAPI-generated documentation pages. We saw how powerful and valuable this can be by looking at some examples and details about various parameters and methods.

Then, we considered another option – not only for exploring but also for interacting with APIs quickly and powerfully: Postman. We learned how to explore and interact with well-known public APIs or build our own and test them through the Postman interface.

Finally, we explored curl, a great CLI tool that provides us with everything we need to interact with our APIs from the command line and helps us with testing and debugging.

But this has nothing to do with Go, which is what this book is about. So, let’s jump into the next chapter and...

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Key benefits

  • Build scalable APIs using Go’s robust standard library and HTTP tooling
  • Explore security, observability, and testing from a backend engineering perspective
  • Learn foundational REST principles by building a complete Go-based project

Description

Modern REST API Development in Go is a hands-on guide to understanding and applying REST principles using Go’s powerful standard library. In an era where interconnected systems demand robust and performant APIs, Go offers the perfect combination of simplicity, performance, and tooling to build modern backend services. This book is centered around a complete, real-world REST API project and guides you through every stage of the development process, from building HTTP handlers to applying authentication and generating OpenAPI documentation. You’ll learn to structure your application, handle persistence with common libraries like GORM and Squirrel, apply observability patterns through logging and tracing, and ensure code quality through unit and integration tests. Each concept is grounded in REST theory and backed by idiomatic Go practices, enabling you to build APIs that are not only functional but production-ready. By the end of the book, you’ll be ready to design, build, and maintain REST APIs in Go.

Who is this book for?

This book is for developers who want to begin building REST APIs using the Go language. Whether you’re new to Go or experienced in backend development, you’ll gain practical skills and foundational knowledge to build secure, performant, and maintainable APIs. Ideal for backend engineers, system integrators, and full-stack developers entering the Go ecosystem.

What you will learn

  • Understand and implement HTTP handlers in Go
  • Create and manage RESTful routes
  • Persist and model data using GORM and Squirrel
  • Secure APIs with JWTs and basic authentication
  • Validate incoming requests with custom logic
  • Log and trace API activity for observability
  • Write unit and integration tests for endpoints
  • Generate API documentation using OpenAPI
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Table of Contents

17 Chapters
Introduction to APIs Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Exploring REST APIs Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building a REST Client Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Designing Your REST API Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Authentication and Authorization Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Data Persistency Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
API Security Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
API Performance Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Deploying Your API Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Testing Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Documenting with OpenAPI Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Metrics, Logs, and Traces Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Using GORM Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Using the Echo Framework Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Unlock Your Book’s Exclusive Benefits Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
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