What I see too often though is folks running multiple UI tests in an attempt to validate specific output values or logic. A much easier way to accomplish this task is to run specific API tests on the business logic of the software. Why should we do this? It’s much faster and easier to write these tests. We can have our developers supporting this process and not just Selenium or automation experts. 'Work smarter, not harder' is a theory we should all be familiar with.

Many current web applications rely on near-frictionless and simultaneous access to numerous API providers' Web APIs. However, the web's default is to prohibit such "loose" behaviour, much like a firewall that blocks access to untrusted parties in the name of security. That default, thankfully, can be safely altered. Before doing so, however, it is necessary for both Web application developers and API providers to understand the concepts of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS).

In this episode of Kongcast, I spoke with Chinmay Gaikwad, the tech evangelist at Epsagon, about distributed tracing and observability for microservices architectures. Check out the transcript and video from our conversation below, and be sure to subscribe to get email alerts for the latest new episodes.

APIs are created so that users can use them as a bridge to connect to applications and services. There are thousands of APIs available for consumption, and each API is unique. But it’s really easy to consume APIs to extend the capabilities of your Linx apps, even complex ones that require OAuth 2.0 tokens. Let us show you how with a real-life example.

We are happy to announce a new major release of Kuma, and a new major release of Kong Mesh built on Kuma! Kuma 1.4 ships with 25+ new features and countless improvements, particularly when it comes to performance. As previously announced at Kong Summit 2021, Kong Mesh ships we enterprise capabilities for large scale service mesh deployments, like RBAC, and native support for Windows VMs.

Earlier this year, we hosted our inaugural Kong Summit Hackathon. This virtual competition engaged our open source community and offered recognition and prizes for hacks in various categories. The community delivered with ingenious plugins, hacks and documentation. In this blog post, we highlight our Insomnia plugin winner, Scott Harwell. Scott works with many hyperscalar cloud infrastructure vendors.

Service Mesh is an infrastructure layer that has become a common architectural pattern for intra-service transparent communication. By combining Kubernetes a container orchestration framework, you can form a powerful platform for your microservices cluster, addressing the typical technical requirements that occur in highly distributed environments. A service mesh is implemented through a sidecar configuration, or proxy instance, for each service instance.

In our last blog post, we discussed the evolution of APIs from early computing to the PC era. In this post, we’ll discuss the evolution of APIs in the early internet age. Along the way, we’ll touch upon associated core technologies such as eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and discuss the introduction of web services and its common components: SOAP and WSDL.

As organizations look to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, a couple of key trends are prevalent. First, there is a movement from monolithic to smaller cloud native microservices. Second, there is more pressure to innovate, resulting in an explosion of APIs and connections to secure. To help organizations address these trends, Kong is joining forces with Okta to deliver the best-in-class identity for API management.

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) Web Services have been around for a long time, and not too long ago was the default when it came to exposing functionality using a common format. SOAP is a standards-based web services access protocol that relies on XML to describe the web service and for all request and response messages.

Moesif is pleased to announce that it has successfully completed its SOC 2 Certification. The Moesif API Analytics Platform has now been independently verified to comply with the highest standards of security. Through completion of this comprehensive level of certification, Moesif has demonstrated that it can reliably and securely maintain the confidentiality, availability and integrity of enterprises’ critical data assets.

We love abstractions. We want to make things easier for developers, teams and end users. In doing that, sometimes we build things a little bit too complex for those who don’t already understand the pain points for which the abstraction layers were built. Kubernetes is an example of this; it solves a very real, very painful problem, but it is notoriously difficult to wrap your head around.

To work and live in today’s digital world, we are unquestionably dependent on interconnected applications. These applications might be massive and highly complex, but they’re also constructed from reusable building blocks, which we call an Application Programming Interface—the API. API adoption is on the rise across all industries. However, APIs aren’t new. They came about from the natural evolution of writing computer software.

I’m proud to share that WSO2 has been recognized in two new Gartner reports for full life cycle API management. We are sincerely grateful to our many satisfied customers for providing their feedback on how WSO2 has been instrumental in driving their digital transformation initiatives. We appreciate the time they took out of their busy schedules to help us out. Now, on to the details.

After you’ve built your microservices-backed application, it’s time to deploy and connect them. Luckily, there are many cloud providers to choose from, and you can even mix and match. Many organizations, like Australia Post, are taking the mix-and-match approach, embracing a multi-cloud architecture. The microservices that make up a system no longer have to stay on a single cloud.

For the first time, Kubernetes engineering teams interested in learning more about Speedscale will be able to play with the framework without registering, at play.speedscale.com. Engineers can see firsthand how you: While users won’t be able to actively watch replays run, there are a variety of pre-created traffic snapshots, reports and configs to browse. Engineers will be able to experience the ease with which snapshots are generated for fast, scalable test automation.

In this episode of Kongcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Aaron Weikle, the founder and CEO at MS3, about supporting legacy-based applications as companies add the next generation of microservices. Check out the transcript and video from our conversation below, and be sure to subscribe to get email alerts for the latest new episodes.

As an API product manager, you want your API to have a great developer experience. This means that developers can get up and running quickly, they get consistent behavior from your API, it’s easy for them to troubleshoot any errors they encounter, and your API makes it easy for them to address their business needs. Tracking your APIs is an important part of understanding how well they perform, which leads most organizations to build out their own internal API tracking systems.

A developer portal is a storefront to your APIs (the products) that internal and external developers are trying to consume. The Kong Developer Portal provides a single source of truth for all developers to locate, access and consume services. With intuitive content management for documentation, streamlined developer onboarding and role-based access controls (RBAC), Kong’s Developer Portal provides a comprehensive solution for creating a unified developer experience.

Artillery is an open-source command-line tool purpose-built for load testing and smoke testing web applications. It is written in JavaScript and it supports testing HTTP, Socket.io, and WebSockets APIs. This article will get you started with load testing your Node.js APIs using Artillery. You’ll be able to detect and fix critical performance issues before you deploy code to production.

This post highlights how you could use Kong Gateway to implement a solution for the Australian Consumer Data Standards (CDS), which is part of the Consumer Data Right legislation introduced by the Australian Government in November 2017. As detailed on the Australian ACCC website: CDR will give consumers greater access to and control over their data and will improve consumers’ ability to compare and switch between products and services.

We recently announced Ably's Control API, a REST API that enables you to manage Ably's configuration programmatically. You can now use the Control API to configure anything previously only configurable via the Ably dashboard. The Ably platform is designed around four pillars of dependability: Performance, Integrity, Reliability, and Availability.

Many organizations have been able to accomplish impressive things using Kong products, including Kong Konnect, Kong Enterprise, Kong Gateway, Kuma and Insomnia. We recently honored four of these enterprises in the inaugural Cloud Connectivity Innovator Awards program during Kong Summit 2021.

The Looker API allows you to programmatically manage your Looker environment. Learn how to do it here!

There are good reasons for spreading workloads and applications across multiple clouds. Options include using a combination of public and on-premises cloud platforms, a strategy known as hybrid cloud—or using more than one public cloud provider, a strategy known as multi-cloud. What are those benefits? And what are some of the best strategies for achieving them? Let’s explore that.

Slowly but surely, HTTP/2 is becoming the favored protocol for transporting data files between clients and servers. While HTTP/1 used to be the only way of loading web applications, it’s now lagging behind, especially on the UX front. Since 2015, HTTP/2 APIs have taken the lead with lightning-fast server responses. In particular, they’re responsible for state changes and server responses without the need for browser reloads.

Changing the technology an organization works with is a bit like taking up a new sport. Your initial excitement leads you to buy the most expensive equipment you can find, leaving you soon to realize that your new tools have created a steep learning curve. Transitioning out of monolithic applications to microservices is quite similar.