Finding, Evaluating, and Integrating External APIs

Capital One March 2014



Matt Makai | @mattmakai | makaimc on GitHub | Twilio Developer Evangelist

APIs are proliferating for good reasons.

Apps = custom code + APIs

Composable Enterprise

"Ok, I'm interested. But how do I start?"

Funnel

Example

Send notifications to users

Find

Push

leanstack.io

saasclub.com

javaweeklybytes.com

Pull

Geckoboard Widget Directory

Ducksboard Integrations

Heroku Addons

Programmable Web

DC API Group

Evaluate

Documentation

Documentation Checklist

  • Clear & concise
  • Languages
  • Tutorials
  • Edge cases
  • Security

Stack Overflow

Forums

Forums

Internal Discussions

Helper Source Code

Evaluation criteria

  • Documentation
  • Stack Overflow
  • Forums
  • Internal discussion
  • Source code

Integrate

Demo

Integration Paths

  • First-party helper library
  • Unofficial helper library
  • Unified API library
  • HTTP requests

Twilio first-party library

GitHub first-party library

GitHub unofficial libraries

Unified API libraries

HTTP requests

Recommendations

  • "Flex" APIs with a REST client
  • Use helper libraries initially
  • Abstract only failover APIs
  • Create libraries for career++
  • Process for upgrading libraries

Resources

Resources

Matt Makai

Picture references