Know any good UI/API articles/books?

[NeoGeo]

I don't come from a exactly formal programming background, what I've learned I've kind of picked up as I've gone along.

Lately I've been designing applications with an API/UI architecture in mind, but I'm constantly having arguments with myself as to what logic should go in the UI and what logic should go in the API. I want to keep as much logic as possible in the API, but often times each interfaces will require a unique combination of my basic functions, so i could place several function calls at the UI level, or I can create one function in the API per UI that calls all the necessary combination of base functions (which seems to defeat the purpose). This is especially the case when it comes to validation.

I don't want to go on too long about my problems, what I'd really like to know is if anyone knows of any particularly good articles or books on the subject.

Thanks!

[AstroTeg]

Before going to far, lets find out what you're developing on. I'm assuming its PHP. But are you doing desktop application development or web development?

If you're doing web development, then I'd lean towards getting away from the use of "UI" and "API". "UI" in a web dev environment would imply the presentation layer (client-side HTML/Flash/Java). But you toss "API" in the mix and that's more server-side with the PHP.

Now if you're thinking about how to organize your HTML and PHP code, that's, I think, a little different. This is more of a design pattern. Check out on google design patterns (toss in "web development as well"). Specifically, check out MVC (Model-View-Controller - my favorite so far). You'll probably find a LOT of Java stuff. There's actually some good ideas that are implied for Java but can be taken over to PHP with relative ease.