Published: 28 April 2025
The book rightly points out that this pattern is similar to traditional beta testing (p. 378), which is why it’s commonly known as a beta API in our governmental and energy sector. Beta APIs provide early access to new features, allowing developers to experiment and give feedback before the API is finalized. They are publicly available but not yet stable – changes to their structure, behavior, or availability may still occur based on user input or internal priorities.
Known Uses
- Rijkswaterstaat Beta Waterwebservices: A governmental API from the Netherlands for exchanging and combining water data. Feedback and updates are shared via the community developer portal
- Beta APIs in the API registry of the DSO developers portal. Community interaction and feedback happen through GeoForum
- Waarstaatjegemeente.nl beta API: An OData API from VNG that provides municipal-level data across various policy
Discussion Input
The use of experimental previews and beta programs is a valuable approach for collecting early feedback from users. It gives consumers the opportunity to influence development and helps teams prepare for future changes.
To support this process, a communication channel—such as a community portal or public forum—is essential. It facilitates feedback loops, announcements, and developer collaboration. In this context, a community portal is far from a luxury; it’s a key part of the ecosystem.
When using Semantic Versioning (SemVer), pre-release versions can be denoted by appending a hyphen followed by a series of dot-separated identifiers.
Examples: 1.0.2-rc.1, 2.0.0-beta.3
(Source: Logius API Guidelines – SemVer)
Read the complete pattern on api-patterns.org