/API

How I Learned To Stop Writing Brittle Tests And Love Expressive APIs

- Titus Winters tl;dr: “Expressive test APIs are a powerful tool in the fight against brittle, implementation-detail heavy tests. A test written with IsSquare(output) is more expressive (and less brittle) than a test written with details such as JsonEquals(.width = 42, .length = 42), in cases where the size of the square is irrelevant.” 

featured in #507

Designing APIs For Humans: Error Messages

- Paul Asjes tl;dr: A valuable error message should: (1) Use the correct HTTP status code. (2) Wrap the error in an “error” object. (3) Be helpful by providing the error code. (4) The error type. (5) A link to the relevant docs. (6) The API version used in this request. (7) A suggestion on how to fix the issue. Paul shares an example by Stripe.  

featured in #499

In-Depth: OpenAPI Client Generation Comparison

- Sagar Batchu tl;dr: OSS SDK generators might seem free, but they have a lot of hidden costs that any enterprise user should consider carefully. Plenty of bugs, no support, spotty OpenAPI compatibility, and more will require a serious investment of engineering resources. Read on to learn about the business and technical considerations and explore available options.

featured in #492

Data-Caching Techniques For 1.2 Billion Daily API Requests

- Guillermo Pérez tl;dr: The cache needs to achieve three things: (1) Low latency: It needs to be fast. If a cache server has issues, you can’t retry. (2) Up and warm: It needs to hold the majority of the critical data. If you lose it, it would surely bring down the backend systems with too much load. (3) Consistency: It should never hold stale or incorrect data. “A lot of the techniques mentioned in this article are supported by our open source meta-memcache cache client.”

featured in #486

SQL As API

- Valentin Willscher tl;dr: "I know what you are thinking: Exposing an API that accepts SQL is crazy. It's a terrible idea. Especially if the API is exposed on the internet. Doing that is insecure and will lead to SQL injection attacks, it is a nightmare to maintain and it will lock the backend implementation into a specific technology (some ANSI SQL database). But is that really true? Time to re-evaluate!"

featured in #476

How To (And How Not To) Design REST APIs

- Jeff Schnitzer tl;dr: "In my career, I have consumed hundreds of REST APIs and produced dozens. Since I often see the same mistakes repeated in API design, I thought it might be nice to write down a set of best practices. And poke fun at a couple widely-used APIs. Much of this may be "duh", but there might be a few rules you haven't considered yet."

featured in #462

How We Improved Our Serverless API 300x

- Daniel Bot tl;dr: ePilot's team improved their serverless API response time by 300x using AWS DynamoDB. They initially faced issues due to a simplistic table design without understanding search patterns and a 10x increase in record data. By redesigning the table and storing more data, they optimized queries, making them 10-20 times faster. The experience emphasized the importance of understanding search patterns and proper design in DynamoDB.

featured in #438

Common Design Patterns At Stripe

- Paul Asjes tl;dr: “You might disagree with how the Stripe API is designed, and the design you end up with is likely going to be different than what we use. That’s just fine, since different companies have different use cases. Instead I present here some design patterns that I believe are generic enough to be useful for just about anyone in the API design process.”

featured in #431

HasuraCon 2023 is June 20-22 - Virtual and Free

tl;dr: HasuraCon is bringing together experts to explore the latest trends, insights, and innovations in the world of GraphQL, data architecture, and app development in this free, online 3-day event. Data APIs are reshaping the world of data delivery, helping enterprises do more by serving data where and when it’s needed in a fast, secure, flexible way. Hasura and its customers are at the forefront, driving this shift. Costco, Verizon, Atlassian, General Mills, and over 40 Fortune 100 companies use Hasura.

featured in #422

Boost Your Team's Productivity With Postman Workspaces

tl;dr: API collaboration is essential for driving development efforts forward. Postman Workspaces help teams streamline the process, ensuring APIs are consistently available, highly performant, and meet consumer needs. Discover how to collaborate effectively at every stage of the API lifecycle in an API-first world.

featured in #413