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Zato is an integration platform and backend application server which means that, during most of their projects, developers using Zato are interested in a few specific matters.
The platform concentrates on answering these key, everyday questions that Python backend developers routinely ask:
The OpenAPI specification defines how to write HTTP APIs that can be consumed by any programming language and provide insight into the APIs’ functionality without access to source code or documentation. In other words, following the specification makes it easier for consumers to understand what it does and how to use it. Tools, such as Swagger, can then be used to display documentation without developers maintaining documentation separate from an API’s code.
All these described points translate into happier users while mitigating some of the burdens you’ll face while supporting your APIs.
Standards are awesome.
What kind of world would this be if programming languages allowed () and [] and {} to be used interchangeably or even mixed together? Chaos would ensue.
Oh no! You have to rewrite that huge legacy app! You've already argued that you can fix the legacy code and you've sent the managers the Joel Spolsky "never rewrite" article. Management responds by pointing out that both Basecamp and Visual Studio both had famously successful rewrites.
Do you update your CV or do you tuck in and get the job done?
Microservices architecture helps in building an application as a suite of multiple fine-grained smaller services. Each of these services run in its own process and are independently deployable. They may have been developed in different programming languages and may use different data storage techniques and communicate with each other via lightweight mechanisms like RESTful APIs, message queues etc. Now that services(API clients) need to know how to interact with each other, there is a need of API documentation that should be clear, informative, and easy to go through.
OpenAPI makes documenting these RESTful services very easy and can be done by adding few annotations to a Spring-based project. Besides rendering documentation, it allows the API consumers to interact with the APIs without having their own implementation logic in place. Also, it can be used to generate the API client libraries for over 50+ languages. In this post, I’ll cover how to use OpenAPI to generate REST API documentation and Java clients for a Spring Boot project.
Editor’s Note: The following is an article written for and published in DZone’s 2021 API Design and Management Trend Report.
API security is at the forefront of cybersecurity. Emerging trends and technologies like cloud-native applications, serverless, microservices, single-page applications, and mobile and IoT devices have led to the proliferation of APIs. Application components are no longer internal objects communicating with each other on a single machine within a single process — they are APIs talking to each other over a network.
In Postman’s 2020 State of the API report, it was found that when it came to API production, the number one obstacle was "lack of time", which was cited by more than half (52.3%) of survey respondents comprising 13,500 developers, testers, and even executives.
This was followed by a "lack of knowledge" with 36.4%.
I am a tech-enthusiast, and I love sharing new technologies, ideas, and innovations about software development. This time, I will be talking about API contract management with Protobuf and OpenAPI.
One of the most important aspects of microservices-based applications is the ability to deploy microservices completely independent of one another. To achieve this independence, each microservice must provide a versioned, well-defined contract to its clients. Each service must not break contracts until it's known that no other microservice relies on a particular contract version.
Happy New Year 2021!
This week, we revisit the API aspects of the SolarWinds breach and check out how APIs featured in the recent Ledger breach. There is also an API vulnerability found in Microsoft’s Office 365 Outlook and a new API development and security plugin for JetBrains IDEs.
When you set out to build your first API, it can very well be that you are either overwhelmed or forget essential points. The ecosystem for API tools is vast, and it’s vital to get the right tool for every phase of your project.
In this article, we will go through the different phases an API project usually has. For every phase, I will list the significant points and tools that help there.
With software products becoming just a bunch of micro-services and third-party APIs mashed together, it's more crucial than ever to get their structure in order.
GraphQL already did this at its inception by coming up with a whole specification that describes how APIs of its type should behave. In the RESTful API landscape, things were a bit more wild west. However, even if not all backend devs know it, there are a number of specifications for REST APIs as well.
Every Friday, Platform.sh has a nice tech discussion about several discussions, such as Jakarta EE, Payara, Quarkus, and so on (To check the calendar you can click here). On Episode number 15 there was a great discussion about Open API and Postman. That's worth watching if you don't yet.
First, let's start with Open API definition, from the website it says:
Enterprises today use an API first approach towards application development and sharing data. This API based approach is used under several scenarios like — breaking up a monolith into microservices, adopting cloud, and adopting Kubernetes.
APIs are also a popular choice to adopt Service Oriented Architectural approach. API also forms a key tenant to support data sharing and logic reuse. An API in an application can be compared to a function in the imperative programming paradigm.
In my last recent article we tried out a Spring Boot Open API 3-enabled REST project and explored some of its capabilities namely:
In this continuation we will explore two additional Objectives namely:
A recurring need in larger integration projects is the generation of API documentation for users belonging to different, yet related, target groups. Read on to learn how to generate Zato-based API specifications for more than one group from a single source of information.
A typical scenario is granting access to the same APIs to external and internal users - what they have in common is that all of them may want to access the same APIs yet not all of them should have access to documentation on the same level of details.
Recently. while working on a requirement, there came a need to upload a file for further processing. Mostly in REST APIs, we are accustomed to using JSON input and output while it is XML for SOAP web services.
This leads us to research how to satisfy the requirement. In Spring, and mainly in Spring Boot, the auto-configuration feature gives us big-time help even though sometimes we have to disable some features to add custom once or to change the order they are sorted in.
This article presents a workflow for auto-generation of API specifications for your Zato services. If you need to share your APIs with partners, external or internal, this is how it can be done.
A connector (often called an SDK) is a piece of code that wraps an external API so that it can communicate with your application. Huh? Ok, well, let’s run through a practical example.
Say you wanted to update a contact in your CRM system every time there was a change to the same contact in your ERP (or accounting system). The providers of both the CRM and ERP system document their APIs on their websites. This documentation describes all of the operations available in the API, the method by which you should connect to the API, security, and other settings.