Continuing on the topic of contracts — metadata that describes your data — it makes sense to see what easy early wins you can make from this stuff. Having a bunch of files written in JSON Schema, API Blueprint, RAML, OpenAPI, etc is not particularly exciting for developers who understand the format,
When building and maintaining a Web API, it's surprisingly common for the "I" (interface) part to be overlooked. Often new functionality is built in close contact with a specific client, with the backend and frontend developers sitting together to hash out the functionality. The frontend developer
I’ve seen a few people promoting GraphQL and gRPC over REST, almost purely on the merits of being "not JSON”. They moan about JSON and instil the virtues of these architectures for their use of stricter type systems. As well as blaming JSON for various imagined faults, they
With endpoint-based APIs (REST, RESTish, SOAP, RPC, AJAX-ish junk, etc.) you get to choose if you want increased likelihood of network cache hits, or the ability to slim down the response. The two goals are mutually exclusive. Slimming responses can be achieved with concepts like sparse fieldsets (tl:dr; send
Do you like the look of GraphQL, but have an existing REST/RPC API that you don’t want to ditch? GraphQL definitely has some cool features and benefits. Those are all bundled in one package, with a nice marketing site, documenting how to do all the cool stuff, which
Recently I wrote GraphQL vs REST: Overview, giving a hype-free outline of the differences between REST and GraphQL. One section that would not have fit into that already lengthy article was caching, so I thought I'd cover this on its own. Comparing how caching is used for the
Representing state is a complex thing. At my last two jobs, it’s been very common for APIs to be treated like "databases over HTTP”. The fields are sent up and down from the server to multiple mobile/web apps, and there’s not too much else going on.
A few months back I wrote a comparison between RPC and REST for Smashing Magazine, and now I want to talk about the differences between REST and GraphQL: the new kid on the block. GraphQL is incorrectly considered by some to be a "replacement" to REST. GraphQL is