Designing a better API?

Question

1. What are the best practices and patterns to be followed for designing APIs?
2. How to achieve implementation hiding the best way (C++/Java)?
3. Designing APIs

Answer 1

You can implement the following guidelines:

1) use established or known methods, examples:

createPatientRecord();
createPatientAppointment();
createPatientCheckup();

2) returning values:

• throw an exception if any
• if no object found, return null
• if several objects, return empty list not null

3) consistent arguments ordering/sequence

recallPatientRecord(long patientId, long hospitalId);
recallPatientRecord(long patientId);
recallPatientRecord(long patientId, long hospitalId, int disciplineCode);