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Avoiding API Waterfalls
1. AVOIDING WATERFALLS
Jakub Nesetril
founder & CEO of Apiary
Tuesday, December 4, 12
2. apiary.io
GitHub for APIs
Tuesday, December 4, 12
3. WHY WE DO THINGS
• documentation and tooling, not architecture
• man-years of API infrastructure work
• companies & teams re-inventing the wheel
Tuesday, December 4, 12
14. BUT WRITE IT DOWN FOR
ALL TO USE
HOST: http://api.twitter.com/
--- Twitter API 3.0 ---
---
Welcome to our API. Comments support Markdown syntax
---
-- Retrieve Tweets --
GET /tweets
> Accept: application/json
< 200
< Content-Type: application/json
{ "items": [
{ "url": "/feed", "range":"2ZY48XPZ", "quantity": 1, "name": "New
socks", "price": 1.25 }
] }
Tuesday, December 4, 12
20. #2: DOCUMENTATION
• how do I make an HTTP call?
• try to follow documentation but API behaves differently
• is it invalid? is it outdated? am I doing it wrong?
Tuesday, December 4, 12
25. #3: SUPPORT
• my API calls are failing, no idea why
• contacting customer support (that caters to shoe customers)
• bumping my head against first-tier support for days until I get
connected to developers
• by that time, debug information is lost, logs are rotated, new
product version is deployed…
Tuesday, December 4, 12
27. SUPPORT
• includes self-service debugger
• API support requests routed directly to devs with debugging
information included
Tuesday, December 4, 12
