API Integration in Python APIs (Application Programming Interface) can be an incredible tool for developers and applications. Internal APIs can help keep features, servers, and data modular so teams can iterate on disparate services without breaking everything. External APIs can provide data and services that are either unavailable to your …
Jarrett Retz
Top 8 Best API Clients
What Are the Best API Clients? With so many options, it's easy to find yourself with a paradox of choice when choosing software. Indeed, this is the case with API clients. Furthermore, best is a relative term. What you are looking for—knowing my search experience—is the most value for the time and money you're willing to invest. And we derive …
Top 8+ Best Mulesoft Alternatives
Data Integration The need for businesses to integrate data has gained momentum in the recent era of data lakes, artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, and online business. However, pulling data from various sources has become a cumbersome task for growing enterprises. Thankfully, there is no shortage of companies that seek to solve …
Top 8 Best Microsoft Azure API Management Alternatives
Introduction The expansion in cloud services available online makes choosing the right products an exhaustive task. Additionally, after choosing one provider, you're often coerced into baking that service into your application. This increases the switching costs associated with cloud services like functions, API management, or storage. As …
Mock API
What is a Mock API? With APIs, to mock is to copy or imitate. Mock APIs provide predefined API responses for client applications. For example, think of an application that has a database. We may want to create a mock API for that database that returns example data representations. Therefore, we can take a handful of common data objects from the …
Federated Architecture
Introduction Federated architecture has emerged as one of the most commonly accepted patterns of enterprise architecture built on the principles of interoperability, but what does that really mean? For many, the term federated architecture likely evokes thoughts of government structure wherein a collection of states or provinces interact with (and …
What is Apache Kafka?
What is Kafka (Apache Kafka)? Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform kafka.apache.org Kafka was developed at LinkedIn in the early 2010s. The software was soon open-sourced, put through the Apache Incubator, and has grown in use. The platform's website claims that over 80% of Fortune 100 companies use or trust …
How to Design an API
Introduction This article will take you through how to design a web-based RESTful API with the OpenAPI Specification. Then, we'll have the option to take the file specification and use it to continue to design and collaborate on our API. Furthermore, this article is a sibling article of Best Practices and Principles for API Design. The two pair …
Best Practices and Principles for API Design
Introduction APIs are created in ways that redefine and stretch products, services, and organizations. Many businesses have asked themselves questions, like: How can we get more modularity? How do we take advantage of new tools and technology? Are we able to scale our infrastructure? How do we know that we're doing it …
API Design
What is API Design? API design is the process of constructing the blueprint for your API. You have the goals, objectives, and hopes for your API on sticky-notes, in emails, or in requirements. Now, you need to pull all that scattered information together into an informative representation of the result. Good API designs anticipate questions and …
Top 9 Best API Design Tools
Introduction “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” ― Isaac Newton, The Correspondence Of Isaac Newton There has been an explosion of available tooling that emerged from cloud computing's growth almost a decade ago. Developers pressing forward to do things better, make things cooler, or slick. The benefit for …
API Lifecycle Management
Introduction The more our lives become infused with technology, the more we seek ways to predict the future to solve problems before they manifest. We want to prepare ourselves for the obstacles ahead, so we are not thrown too far off course. The same is true when developing APIs. API publishers want to have a plan in place for their API. …
API Management vs. API Gateway
Introduction It's time to start taking your API seriously. You have plans to expand functionality, change the pricing plan, and implement a new marketing strategy. However, you start to feel lost the more research you do. Reading about new topics, tools, and strategies becomes overwhelming. What happened to your simple APIs? The popularity of …
How to Test API Endpoints
What is RapidAPI Testing? RapidAPI Testing is a cloud-based API testing tool that allows you to create comprehensive API tests (as well as monitor APIs). With RapidAPI testing, you can test all of your REST APIs. There is also support for SOAP and GraphQL APIs. This API testing tool integrates with a user's internal or external APIs that may …
What is API Governance?
Introduction It can be frustrating to understand API governance when you're new to API management. Many articles discuss the details of one aspect of API governance in-depth, leading the reader farther from the big picture. Thus, their understanding suffers, and they miss the purpose of governance. This article hopes to center your …
