Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

April 2024

Managing Application Auth for Different Audiences

Let’s pose a hypothetical scenario. You're the API product owner at the Paris, Texas Regional Airport. You're in charge of two main APIs: Flights API and Scheduling API. Flights API is primarily used by local research institutions that are interested in read-only access to information about departures and arrivals. Scheduling API is primarily used by airline partners who are interested in updating information about their flights and gates.

How To Estimate API Development Time

Application programming interfaces (APIs) have quickly become vital to modern businesses. APIs work by allowing different systems to talk to each other and share data. The commercial use of APIs and web APIs has skyrocketed over the last decades in accordance with the rise in app development, mobile apps, and e-commerce. However, how do you estimate API development time? Well, API creation and the development time frame will always vary from project to project.

7 Must-Know Factors in API Development

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of rules and protocols that let software programs communicate with each other. It acts as an intermediary between different software or services. For example, when using a mobile app to book a hotel room, the API allows the app to communicate with the hotel’s booking system. While many REST API developers have their way of doing things, some factors in API development are generally considered essential.

Choosing The Perfect Message Queue: Factors To Consider

Not long ago, I was handed a problem that’s no stranger to the world of programming: making asynchronous threads communicate effectively within the same process. Given the widespread nature of this issue, I expected to find an existing solution to resolve it. My search led me to the concept of message queue, which seemed promising for streamlining this communication challenge.

GitOps Integration with WSO2 APK: Kubernetes Native API Management

Explore the seamless integration of GitOps with WSO2 API Platform for Kubernetes (APK) in this enlightening screencast session. The need for a robust API management solution that fits naturally into the Kubernetes ecosystem has never been more critical. WSO2 APK emerges as a solution designed to harmonize with Kubernetes-native practices, offering native GitOps integration to API lifecycle management. This session delves into how WSO2 APK not only simplifies the deployment and management of APIs within Kubernetes clusters but also enhances operational efficiency and consistency through GitOps methodologies.

Master Documenting Your APIs: Tips for Effective API Documentation

API (application programming interface) document works as a developer’s compass for navigating complex services. In this guide, we provide straightforward insights into crafting excellent API documentation. At the end of this article, you will know how to succeed as both creators and consumers of APIs through effective documentation.

Using Python for GET API Calls: A Step-by-Step Guide for Developers

Understanding how to make a GET request to an API using Python is an essential skill for developers. This article will guide you through the process, demonstrating how to use Python’s ‘requests’ library to fetch data, handle the full JSON object in response, and manage API errors efficiently. Step into the practical world of Python GET API calls without any detours.

GitTogether | Let's get Meshy with Istio Service Mesh | Leon Nunes

In the world of microservices, networking and Observabilty is always a challenge, often there are different methodologies used. A service mesh is something that standardizes this. Istio service mesh is a mature framework that runs in K8s and provides a standard interface for this In this session we will do a istio 101 and go over how a service mesh helps with microservices and hybrid architectures.

Resolving Database Conflicts with Centralized APIs in Microservices

Back in the 2000s, code lived in one execution thread. Database queries, user interactions, and data pipelines were all managed by the same processes. The problem? Everything was interconnected and interdependent. Fixing one thing might break another. Releases were all or nothing. We call this monolith hell. Your ticket out? Microservices.

Kong Mesh 2.7: Leveling Up Usability and Security

Kong Mesh 2.7 is here! And with it come a slew of new features to make our simple and powerful enterprise service mesh even easier to use and more powerful for your particular needs. In this blog post, we'll cover the new features and show how Kong Mesh 2.7 can deliver a superior service mesh experience for your organization.

Understanding Data Archiving: Importance and Fundamentals

For businesses and organizations of all sizes, data archiving is a critical but often underappreciated process that leadership and IT professionals need to prioritize.While moving inactive data from primary storage to long-term archival systems may seem like a back-office operational task, it has strategic importance. Archiving is essential for remaining compliant with data retention regulations like HIPAA, SOX and GDPR, which can carry heavy fines and legal risks if mishandled.

GitTogether | Cloud Native Security Landscape | Sangam Biradar

Digital transformation is driving the adoption of cloud-native applications. Cloud-native applications are more complex and pose new security challenges. Organizations need to adopt new security practices to protect their cloud-native applications. Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) is a suite of tools and services that can help organizations secure their cloud-native applications.

WSO2 Advances Developer Productivity With Latest API Management and Integration Offerings

Developers can now manage data planes for WSO2 API Manager and WSO2 API Platform for Kubernetes with the same control plane, develop integrations in VS Code using Micro Integrator for VS Code, and utilize AI assistants to streamline efforts.

Introducing Insomnia 9.0 with Pre-request Scripting, Improved Offline Access, API Mocking, and 100+ Improvements

Kong Insomnia 9.0 is now generally available for download. It ships with many new features and improvements — over one hundred improvements in total! This new version of Kong Insomnia also makes it much easier to migrate from other products with a more reliable “import” experience, while improving the speed of using the product and making it more customizable. Let’s dive into all the notable features.

Introducing WSO2 API Manager 4.3: Stronger, Streamlined API Management

We’re delighted to announce the release of WSO2 API Manager 4.3, a significant upgrade that enhances your API ecosystem's performance, security, and scalability. WSO2 API Manager, an industry-leading open source API management solution, offers a unified platform for creating, publishing, and overseeing APIs, enabling organizations to securely expose their services with both internal and external stakeholders.

Unveiling WSO2 APK 1.1: Kubernetes-Native API Management

We're excited to introduce WSO2 API Platform for Kubernetes (WSO2 APK) 1.1, a key update to our Kubernetes-native API management solution. This release leverages the strengths of Kubernetes to offer high-performance and cloud-scale API management, ensuring automation, reliability, and improved developer experiences. Traditional API management solutions aren't built for Kubernetes environments, leading to issues with performance, scalability, and manual configuration.

What is a Microapp: An Emerging Trend

The microapp trend is on the rise! In the approximately two years since joining the DreamFactory team, I’d estimate I’ve conversed with more than one thousand companies about their API-based projects. These conversations provide a great opportunity to peer inside the IT operations of organizations large and small, not to mention pick up on emerging technology trends.

REST API Security Essentials

Cybersecurity is one of the most prominent and pressing concerns for businesses today. As developers move more of their web applications to a microservices architecture, data is shared by web service APIs now more than ever. Industry analysts predicted that API attacks would become the most common attack vector by the end of this year. Unfortunately, that prediction has come true.

The Ultimate Guide to REST API Naming Convention: Best Practices for Clarity & Consistency

Efficient and consistent REST API naming conventions can streamline your development process and make navigating your API easier for developers. This guide will look at what’s needed for creating intuitive and consistent endpoint names, REST API naming conventions and best practices, and how to avoid common errors. Let’s begin by taking a quick refresher on some of the basics of REST API endpoints.

Managing Go Processes

While working on an application that required executing a command to run a blocking program, such as a TCP/HTTP server, I encountered an interesting challenge. I needed a way to stop the application and its child processes when a signal was sent to the main program, such as SIGINT (Ctrl+C) or SIGTERM. This blog post shares my journey and the solutions I found to manage processes effectively in a Go application, focusing on Linux environments.

API for Dummies: Your Easy Guide to Understanding APIs

If the term “API” puzzles you and you feel lost in a world of tech talk, this guide is for you. APIs, or application programming interfaces, act as the language that allows different software applications to talk to one another. Imagine you’re ordering a coffee at a cafe; the API is like the waiter who takes your order to the barista and then brings your coffee to you.

How I Simulated A Response From A Third Party App

Whether you’re building a web application, a mobile app, or any other software product, integrating with third-party APIs is almost inevitable. But what happens when you need to test your application’s behavior without relying on these external services? That’s where the magic of simulation comes in handy. In this blog, we’ll explore how you can simulate responses effectively, even if the actual service isn’t available.

Using DreamFactory for Legacy Application Modernization

Many organizations face the challenge of legacy application modernization. DreamFactory, an on-premise API generation and management platform, offers a robust solution for this transition. By enabling the creation of APIs from any data source, automating integration processes, and enhancing security measures, DreamFactory simplifies the modernization of outdated systems.

GitTogether | Open Source Dev Containers with DevPod | Hrittik Roy

Many developers are excited about Dev Containers, but until now, people needed to use a managed service like Codespaces or Gitpod to experience that Dev Container magic. DevPod is a new open-source tool that allows users to launch Dev Containers with any infrastructure they have available. DevPod introduces a way to define a development environment that can then be run on any cloud infrastructure or even on a localhost machine using Docker or Kubernetes locally or on the cloud. This talk is all about how you can use DevPod locally or on cloud to run your developer workloads easily.

From Acquisition to Integration: How SmartBear is Elevating API Development with Stoplight

Back in August, SmartBear acquired Stoplight, a leader in API design and documentation. Since this acquisition, our focus has been on seamlessly integrating Stoplight's open-source tools—Spectral, Elements, and Prism—into SwaggerHub. Our goal is to simplify complex API development tasks and address the common challenges encountered in API development.

Snowflake's New Python API Empowers Data Engineers to Build Modern Data Pipelines with Ease

In today’s data-driven world, developer productivity is essential for organizations to build effective and reliable products, accelerate time to value, and fuel ongoing innovation. To deliver on these goals, developers must have the ability to manipulate and analyze information efficiently. Yet while SQL applications have long served as the gateway to access and manage data, Python has become the language of choice for most data teams, creating a disconnect.

How to Perform Database Analysis with AI

This blog explores how DreamFactory leverages its robust features to perform database analysis with AI, ensuring secure and efficient data operations. We will discuss the platform’s ability to generate dynamic APIs, provide real-time data insights, and maintain stringent security measures to protect data integrity.

Microapps vs. Microservices: the Similarities and Differences

From the end user’s perspective, the microapps and microservices often seem to provide the same functionality. However, development teams need to think about microapps vs. microservices when building products. Before you commit time to microapps or microservices architecture, take some time to consider how these options will affect user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and security of your websites, web apps, and mobile apps.

The Types of APIs Your Organization Might Need

When comparing the types of APIs (application programming interfaces), API architecture types and different API categories are incredibly important. The following article will discuss API architecture and protocol types (REST and SOAP) and three types of API categories (open, internal, and partner). Here’s the key things to know about the types of APIs your organization might need: Table of Contents.

Announcing the GA of Kong Konnect Dedicated Cloud Gateways

Today we announce the general availability of Kong Konnect Dedicated Cloud Gateways, delivering on our promise when we launched the service in tech preview late last year. Cloud Gateways is a fully managed, multi-region API management solution. It’s the easiest and fastest way to deploy performant, scalable, and highly available global API management infrastructure in the cloud using Kong Gateway with Kong Konnect, Kong’s unified API platform.

How Asgardeo Protects You from Costly Downtime

We all love the ease and affordability of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) tools. We expect our SaaS apps to be available whenever we need them, building our business processes around this assumption. At WSO2, we are grateful that many organizations trust our SaaS solutions, and we continually work to ensure this trust is well-founded. It’s worth taking a moment to understand the impact when those mission-critical apps go offline. Just one minute of downtime can cost businesses thousands of dollars.

Download a file from SharePoint with the API

Many organizations are turning to SharePoint to store their files and share documents. Allowing your systems to access these files might seem like a challenge at first, but with the help of the Microsoft Graph API, you can quickly download the file to start processing on your back-end. Download the example solution to get started. Use the created functions in your solution to simplify Microsoft Graph integration.

Streamline Your AI Integration: A Deep Dive into Kong AI Gateway

Join us to learn about the AI Gateway concept and explore the rapidly evolving landscape of large language models (LLMs) in modern applications. With the surge of AI providers and the lack of standardization, organizations face significant challenges in adopting and managing AI services effectively. Kong's AI Gateway, built on the proven Kong Gateway platform, addresses these challenges head-on, empowering developers and organizations to harness the power of AI quickly and securely.

Gittogether | How to stay technical as an Engineering leader | Robin Gupta

"Every engineer hits the fork in the road in their career, deciding whether to grow as an engineering manager or an architect. The dangling question is: ""How will I keep my technical skills sharp?"" This was the predicament I faced as I transitioned from a Tech Lead to a Senior Management role. My solution? Open source.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Uncovering the Reasons Behind a Mysterious Performance Regression

At Kong, we take the robustness and performance of our gateway product seriously, dedicating ourselves to maintaining high standards through a robust internal benchmark framework and infrastructure. Our setup includes a dedicated bare metal cluster for running performance tests, seamlessly integrated into our CI/CD process. Moreover, we conduct extensive performance testing for each major, minor, and patch release candidate.

Write Clean And Efficient Table Driven Unit Tests In Go

Table driven tests, also known as parameterized tests, have became very popular over the past few years, due to their ability to eliminate repetition. Table driven tests make it quite a bit easier to re-use the same values for different sets of tests by just moving the table outside of the scope of the test function. Different tests may benefit from the same input, and each test may have completely different configration, concurrency etc…

GitTogether | Building scalable open source communities | Haimantika Mitra

Whether you are an open source project or an open source company, thriving and scaling the community is a challenge for maintainers. In this talk we will cover how one can build an open source community from scratch, what kind of initiatives and programs to build and how to ensure a healthy contributor-maintainer relationship, along with real-life case studies. 🔑The main takeaways will be.

Keeping Your APIs Safe: Best Practices for Top-Notch Security

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are everywhere, and they play a role in running nearly everything in our digital-centric lives. Each time we launch a web page or an app on our phone, dozens of API calls are happening in the background to render an experience heavily customized to you. Increasingly, even the everyday items in your home are talking to APIs — from smart speakers like Amazon Echo to appliances, electricity meters, and lightbulbs.

Integrating with Microsoft Graph API - Creating a Calendar Event

Microsoft Graph API allows developers to access data and services across a wide range of Microsoft cloud services. Admittedly setting up permissions and security can be challenging, but once that is sorted, you will be able to access Microsoft services such as Office365, Outlook and Azure. Calling the Graph API with Linx allows you to efficiently automate tasks, or integrate with Microsoft products to ensure that functionality and data is accessible by your other systems.

What is API Testing? A Complete Guide To Test APIs

APIs are the backbone of the digital world. Every time you use an application such as Facebook or Instagram, or even check the weather, it is likely that some APIs are at work. They are the middleman of apps and web services, and API testing is crucial to ensure that this middleman works seamlessly. In this article, we’ll explore the concept of API testing in depth. We’ll also show you how easy and simple it is to automate API testing with just a few steps.

Step-by-Step Blueprint to Create RESTful APIs for Efficient Web Services

Creating RESTful APIs is essential for efficient web service development. With this article, you’ll learn to create restful apis using Node.js and Express by following a concise, step-by-step approach designed for real-world application. From server setup to endpoint creation and securing data, we’ve got you covered. This comprehensive guide will ensure you grasp the fundamentals while also diving into the more nuanced aspects of RESTful API development.

How to Manage Your Kubernetes Services with an API Gateway

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It groups containers into logical units for easy management and discovery. API gateways sit between clients and microservices. They act as a reverse proxy to accept all API calls, then route and transform requests to appropriate microservice.

How to Manage Your Kubernetes Services with an API Gateway

Want to try it out yourself? The quickest way to get started with Kong Ingress Controller is with Kong Konnect. Learn how to efficiently manage and secure microservices deployed on Kubernetes using an API gateway. This tutorial demonstrates integrating Kubernetes services with Kong Gateway via the Kong Ingress Controller.

CData Alternatives for 2024

Many businesses are on the lookout for robust alternatives to popular tools like CDATA. Whether it’s due to cost, specific functionality, or compatibility requirements, finding the right tool can significantly impact your data management strategies. Here’s what you need to consider when looking for a CDATA alternative: Table of Contents.

Hasura vs. DreamFactory: A Comprehensive Comparison

In this article, we’ll be comparing Hasura vs. DreamFactory, two leading platforms in the API management and development space. Both platforms offer features tailored to aid with backend API development, but they cater to different use cases and developer preferences. Here are the key differences between Hasura and DreamFactory: Table of Contents.

Fireside chat on WSO2 Identity Server 7.0

WSO2 Identity Server is the leading open source IAM solution. It is a powerful, modern access management solution for your on-premises or cloud environment that provides secure access for your consumers (B2C), enterprise customers (B2B), workforce (B2E), or APIs. WSO2 Identity Server manages more than 1 billion identities worldwide, and its extensibility allows it to support the most complex IAM requirements.

Introduction to Unified Data: What Is It and Why Is It Important

Terence Bennett - April 9, 2024 Today’s businesses rely on data to operate. Everything from collecting customer data to recording data points from business processes contributes to reaching goals. Big data doesn’t mean much, though, when you keep it separated in silos. When you unify data, you create more data analytics opportunities that lead to valuable insights.

Kong Konnect: Get Started with Kong Gateway in 10 Minutes

In this Kong Konnect tutorial, you'll learn how to get started with Konnect and manage your API ecosystem from a single, easy-to-use interface. We'll cover how to use Konnect Runtime Manager to set up your own Kong Gateway instance in Docker (1:00). Then we'll walk through how you can expose, secure and manage your first service using the Konnect ServiceHub (2:22). Lastly, we'll publish that API to our developer portal and show how you can share that documentation with your users and developers all within Konnect (9:20).

The AI API Gold Rush: How to Turn Your Models into Revenue With Moesif

So, you’ve built a cutting-edge AI model! Congratulations! With the vast array of AI capabilities coming to market, it may generate realistic product descriptions, analyze customer sentiment, or perform cutting-edge processing. Innovation with AI is helping companies to discover new capabilities and use cases. However, innovation alone isn’t enough. To truly reap the rewards of an investment in AI, companies need a strategy to monetize it.

Defend Your APIs: Secure by Design

The digital landscape has witnessed an explosion of APIs in recent years. These powerful tools act as the glue binding applications together, facilitating data exchange and powering our interconnected world. But with this rapid rise comes a growing concern: securing these APIs to safeguard sensitive information. In our recent webinar at SmartBear, "Defend Your APIs: Secure by Design," API experts Frank Kilcommins and Yousaf Nabi unpacked some critical strategies for keeping your APIs safe.

Guide to API Adoption | A Comprehensive Overview

You must constantly innovate and expand your offerings to stay ahead of the curve. One way to do this is by adopting APIs. API adoption can help you improve customer experience, increase efficiency, and drive innovation. This guide to API adoption will discuss APIs, including how they work, what benefits API adoption offers, and how to get started. Here’s the key things to know about API adoption: Table of Contents.