Save Money and use APIs
Navigating a website using APIs is many times more efficient than an LLM thrash through tokens - so why isn't it more popular? Also in this newsletter: Fastify + OpenAPI, an HTTPS benchmarking tool, Voiden, and more!
While I still have so many mixed feelings about AI, one of its killer abilities is pulling information from across apps, documents, and internal tools to find what I need. Honestly, this saves me days at work, but is this the most efficient way?
A lot of AI Agents don't use API's, they use a web/apps visual interface, which burns significantly more tokens, based on recent testing. Turns out a good API with good documentation is what you need. Thankfully, everyone is great at building APIs... 🫠
-- Alexander
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API News, links, and tools from around the web
Plow: a HTTP(S) benchmarking tool
Benchmarking tools are great and even better when written in Go 😉. Plow uses fasthttp under the hood and produces real-time summary statistics, a histogram of execution time and calculates percentiles. Displaying on the web and in your terminal. Seriously, check this out:
Find My Way
A remarkably fast HTTP router that's framework independent. How is it so fast? It uses a highly performant Radix Tree. If you are already using Fastify or Restify, then you may already be using it. Also comes with a nice benchmark against other routers.
QUIC and HTTP/3 Come To Node.js (finally)
Who wants to use HTTP/2 anymore? We want HTTP/3, right? Well, it's now available in the node:quic module behind the flag --experimental-quic. James talks us through the module and how to use it. Be warned, it's highly experimental, but try it out today.
Testing in Ktor Server
Every time I have to walk in the Java world, I reach for Ktor. Honestly, it's a delightful framework for building server applications in Kotlin. However, what about testing once you have that API set up? Thankfully, Ktor comes with a testing engine that runs the application call directly, without starting the full web server, helping you create fast-running tests.
The Indie Web Index API
There's a rather cute web index of indie sites covering tech blogs, search engines, RSS aggregators, and more. Recently, they also dropped a nice read-only API for pulling the same data. Not strictly API news, but it's wonderful to see projects like this exist in an increasingly closed-off web.
APIs You Won't Hate
Articles written and shared in our free Slack community.
Which of Fastify's OpenAPI Plugins is Best?
An in-depth test drive of several popular options for using Fastify with OpenAPI - written by Phil and chock full of good information. Fastify is a fantastic, popular, low-overhead Node.js framework, but how does the support for OpenAPI stack up?
Happy Birthday Mike
API's You Won't Hate was founded by Phil when he wrote his first book on APIs, but he quickly teaming up with Mike. It takes a lot of work to keep API's You Won't Hate running, covering our website, newsletter, OpenAPI.tools and our community. Thank you for all your hard work, and happy birthday.
From our Community
Articles written and shared in our free Slack community.
Voiden, An Offline First API Client
Nikolas Dimitroulakis jumped into our Slack community to share his new open source API Client. Your API specs, tests, documentation and context all in executable markdown. Personally, I like that tagline Nikolas uses: "curl living in Obsidian files". Definitely worth checking out.
Thanks so much to our members: Kin L, Juxt, Alex R, Nolan S, Frank, Bill, James D, Rich, Ryan T, Umair, Abdelhadi, and Brandon. Your support means the world to us!
✌️ Until next time,
Alexander, Phil & Mike
