/API

Benefits Of API Collaboration In An API-First World

tl;dr: Collaboration is the key to successful API development. Whether it's working with internal teams or external partners, effective collaboration can help teams work faster, smarter, and with fewer errors. In this article, we explore the best practices for API collaboration and offer tips for working more effectively across the entire API lifecycle.

featured in #412

Meaningful Collaboration Across The API Lifecycle

- Kin Lane tl;dr: Collaboration is at the heart of successful software development, but working together on APIs brings challenges. In this article, Kin Lane, Chief Evangelist at Postman dives into the critical components of meaningful API collaboration across the API lifecycle and provides insights and strategies for success.

featured in #411

When To Use gRPC vs GraphQL

- Loren Sands-Ramshaw tl;dr: "I’ve read a lot of comparisons of these two protocols and wanted to write one that is comprehensive and impartial... I was inspired by the release of connect-web (a TypeScript gRPC client that can be used in the browser) and a popular HN post entitled GraphQL kinda sucks." Loren writes a thorough comparison.

featured in #375

Structured Error Messages For HTTP APIs

- Nicolas Frankel tl;dr: Nicolas identifies 2 problems: (1) HTTP status codes were specified for human-to-machine interactions via browsers, not for machine-to-machine interactions via APIs. Hence, selecting a status code that maps one-to-one to the use case is rarely straightforward. (2) The error payload's structure is unimportant if a single organization manages the client and the API provider. However, the issue occurs when a team decides to use a third-party API.

featured in #364

OpenAPI Tutorial: How to Automatically Generate Tests for OpenAPI Generator SDKs

- Lee Wang tl;dr: OpenAPI is an industry-standard definition language for building patterned, uniform APIs. This OpenAPI Tutorial includes code samples, templates, and testing strategies for generating SDK code for APIs you're building.

featured in #349

Webhooks.fyi

tl;dr: "While webhooks are universal in concept, they are unstandardized API contracts with few organizations paying attention to their design, security controls, and overall operational experience. Webhooks.fyi seeks to change that. It serves both as a directory of webhook providers and a collection of best practices for providing and consuming webhooks."

featured in #349

Under The Hood: How We Built API Versioning For LinkedIn Marketing APIs

- Nihit Purwar tl;dr: "We were releasing breaking changes almost monthly with different sunset dates – making it hard for developers to test and plan their roadmap without a predictable release schedule. Unversioned APIs also blocked customers from accessing the latest features and caused internal challenges with new feature development." Nihit's discusses how his team set out to build API versioning for LinkedIn Marketing APIs.

featured in #346

Best Practices For Making API Calls At Scale

- David Donnelly tl;dr: 3’s a crowd and 429’s a rate limit exceeded error. We explore best practices for making API calls at scale, the 4 most common ways rate limits are implemented, and a methodology for avoiding rate limits dynamically.

featured in #331

The 10 REST Commandments

- Vedran Cindrić tl;dr: Having spent the past 10 years building APIs, Vedran Cindrić, the co-founder of Treblle, goes through 10 essential rules on how to build and run amazing REST APIs that scale in any programing language.

featured in #295

How To Design A Good API And Why It Matters

- Preslav Mihaylov tl;dr: Based on a 2007 talk, this post covers why APIs matter, the process of design, general principles, and briefly bullets out class, method and exception designs. 

featured in #266