Businesses around the world are relying on Application Programming Interfaces more than ever before to serve their clients. As microservices and serverless architecture become more prevalent, a higher amount of API integration points is needed to ensure businesses continue to have visibility and a competitive edge. If you are looking to create your own API, here are some excellent tips to follow.
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Select Your Programming Language
The first step in creating an API is to select the programming language you intend to use. You will utilize different methods of building your API, depending on your chosen language. JavaScript, Node.js, and Python are three of the most popular programming languages used by developers to build APIs, but you could also work with:
· Django
· PHP
· MongoDB
· Ruby
· Spring Boot
Use REST and HATEOAS
Because REST is a proven and tested architectural approach for web services design and is independent of any underlying protocols, it is ideal for designing APIs. With REST principles, you can treat endpoints as resources with a conventional naming scheme, enabling better readability, consistency, and uniformity. If you are new to building RESTful APIs, check out this excellent rest api tutorial.
With Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State, which is an element of REST application architecture, you can enhance every resource’s response model by providing a set of relevant links, making it easier to interact with your API without the need to look up specifications or metadata.
Use a Versioning Strategy
When your API is used as a product, clients will expect the right responses. And any API product will naturally need to evolve over time as business requirements alter. However, changing a published and used API interface comes with many challenges. The last thing you want to do is introduce changes without clients being aware of it. Thankfully, solutions are available. The best option is to put the version information into the URL.
Use Filtering and Pagination
When you expose an API that returns lists that can change over time, it is important you establish a pagination strategy. Clients cannot view hundreds of returns at the same time, so it is helpful if you create a pagination where the first ten results are shown, for example. If your API returns the entire database for each request, many resources will be wasted, and the performance is sure to degrade substantially. It is easy to paginate results with modern frameworks, but you can also customize your own.
Secure the Endpoints
If you neglect security when creating your API, it can have terrible legal consequences. So, you must establish security controls early in your development process by securing endpoints. Ideally, you should get an external vendor to assess your API before launching it.
Use Monitoring and Reporting Tools
The work does not stop after you have created and launched your API. You need to ensure continual support is provided before the code is deployed for production via monitoring and reporting tools. If anything goes wrong, the right people need to be notified with the relevant information so that they can respond quickly.