In my last post, I introduced Troyal, a fictional API for tracking music and film royalties, and shared the product brief, the API design and the README.
And now, I just wrote the Getting Started guide.
If you're a developer trying a new API, this is the page you open first. Its primary job is to get you from nothing to a working request as fast as possible.
My guide takes you through:
- Getting an API key
- Sending your first request to
GET /works - Reading the response
- Fixing the most common errors (401, 404 and 429)
The part I paid most attention to was the troubleshooting table. Errors are when a developer needs the docs most, and a clear "here's what went wrong and what to do" prevents frustration.
Everything is public on GitHub, and Part 3 will be the OpenAPI spec.
Troyal is fictional. The documentation is real.
