All things come to an end, even HTTP APIs. However great your API may be today, one day you’ll want to release a completely new version, an improved but incompatible endpoint, a new parameter that solves the same problem better, or to shut down your API entirely. Your current API will not be live forever.

Inconveniently though, your API has clients. If you shut down endpoints, parameters, or entire APIs without properly warning them then they’re going to be very unhappy.

How do you shut down your APIs safely, making it at easy as possible for your users?

There are right ways to do this, including two new draft headers being standardized by the exciting new IETF “Building Blocks for HTTP APIs” working group, designed to help with this exact process. Let’s take a look.

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