API Developer Weekly – July 28, 2016 – Issue #122
A hand-curated weekly newsletter for API developers, published with permission from LaunchAny and CaseySoftware.
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Hot Topics
Twilio Sync brings real-time information via a single API
Twilio is making it easier for developer to make cross-platform apps that display information in real-time, no matter where users go. A new API called Sync provides state synchronization regardless of platform, and aims to offload much of the issues that dog an app’s development process. by Nate Swanner [thenextweb.com]
New Version of Swagger Codegen Plugs Security Vulnerabilities
Swagger Codegen 2.2.0 has been released with new functionality, security fixes, and improvements including JMustache update, codegen model improvement, addition of Apache 2.0 license to all generators, and additional integration tests using Shippable and AppVeyor. This latest release of Swagger Codegen includes a number of enhancements and bug fixes for API client generators and API server generators. [programmableweb.com]
APIs: From Connected Home Into Programmable Platform
“Consumers don’t want to deal with separate proprietary apps for each type of connected device in their home…” As we move into a postapp world, where devices and services from multiple sources can be blended together for access via digital personal assistants, application programming interfaces (APIs) are the key to this integration. [cxotoday.com]
Microsoft REST API Guidelines Are Not RESTful
Microsoft has published their guidance for creating “RESTful” APIs. Roy Fielding calls them HTTP APIs that have little to do with REST. Many organizations have published their recommendations for creating HTTP APIs for the web. Even the US White House has published a standard at White House Web API Standards. [infoq.com]
REST Fest – RESTful Web Services Unconference in Greenville, SC, USA – September 15 – 17, 2016
REST Fest is a unique blend of presentations and collaborative unconference goodness. The keynote sits directly in the middle of the conference schedule with hackday, workshop, session, talks, and 5-in-5 lightening talks surrounding it. [2016.restfest.org]
Video: Business Process Orchestration & APIs
Saul Caganoff discusses the different use cases for API consumption and the technical affordances API designers can provide to support those use cases. [infoq.com]
Watch SmartBear Tame AWS Lambda with SwaggerHub
Whilst software developers continue to mull the use of serverless computing, the technology continues to evolve. As the dust has settled, there now exists more education and opportunity for enterprises and startups alike to embrace serverless technology in their stack. With the aim to help ease the learning curve to working with serverless technologies such … by Kiran “CK” Oliver, Jennifer Riggins [thenewstack.io]
Google launches new API to help you parse natural language
Google today announced the public beta launch of its Cloud Natural Language API, a new service that gives developers access to Google-powered sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and syntax analysis. This new API joins Google’s other pre-trained machine-learning APIs like the Cloud Speech API, which is now also available in public beta, the Vision API and the Translate API. by Frederic Lardinois [techcrunch.com]
8 Security Considerations for API Testing
It seems like every day we see reminders of the importance of thorough security testing from all areas of the software world. Security has become an especially critical consideration for APIs in recent years. by Cameron Laird [blog.smartbear.com]
API Digest #49: How APIs Are Fuelling a Cultural Shift in Business
API Digest is here again with the traditional at-a-glance survey of interesting and useful API news, articles and insights of the last fortnight. In today’s issue you will find a brief overview of the following themes: why developers don’t like writing docs, APIs fuel a cultural shift in businesses, a big shift in Saas, reasons for thoroughly testing your API, role of APIs for the startups and more. [api2cart.com]
Apigee Labs: Add Key Functionality to Your APIs
We’re pleased to unveil Apigee Labs, where we research, design, develop, and innovate with the aim of advancing the world of API management. [apigee.com]
TIBCO Expands Scope of API Management Platform
5 Ways to Get Developers to Adopt Your APIs Almost a year after acquiring the Mashery application programming interfaces (API) management platform from Intel, TIBCO Software today unfurled a Mashery Enterprise offering that now includes the ability to compose and choreograph APIs. [itbusinessedge.com]
AWS-API.info
Overview of all Amazon AWS API urls in a friendly, easy to browse format. [aws-api.info]
HTTPS Adoption *doubled* this year
Over 20 years after its incept HTTPS, is finally breaking through. In the last year alone, HTTPS adoption has more than doubled! This is a moment for celebration and learning, and this post digs into the data and the lessons we can learn from it [snyk.io]
Upcoming Web API Events
A list of upcoming Web API Events, maintained by Matthew Reinbold
The Business of APIs
Platformization is the scaffold that helps startups build their business faster
Today’s startups are all about bringing to market a great idea, as quickly as possible, and scaling their business to gain adoption and market share before their idea gets replicated. And today, there is less margin for error than ever. Speed and agility In an increasingly open and fluid world, it is increasingly difficult to keep a secret. by Yves de Montcheuil [restlet.com]
Platform failure: Why the mighty fail
The success of platform businesses like Alibaba, Airbnb, and Uber is so remarkable that discussion about them often misses just how hard they are to build. This article was originally published on the Harvard Business Review. This article was co-authored with Marshall Van Alstyne and Geoffrey Parker. [platformed.info]
Scale lets companies outsource their human-powered tasks with one line of code
A new startup called Scale, officially launching today, wants to make it easier for businesses to outsource their core processes and tasks that require people, not algorithms, to handle. This could include anything from appointment scheduling to more complicated matters like content moderation, transcriptions, and more. by Sarah Perez [techcrunch.com]
APIs: A Culture Shift for the Digital Revolution
Visually compose APIs with easy-to-use tooling. Learn how IBM API Connect provides near-universal access to data and services both on-premises and in the cloud, brought to you in partnership with IBM. When we hear the word “disruption” we usually think of start-ups taking over a particular space through an innovative approach. [dzone.com]
(Un)Related Topics
The traits of a proficient programmer
Do you know what the difference between competence and proficiency is? That sounds like a trick question, because the words seem to mean the same thing. But the subtle distinction between them is critically important. by Gregory Brown [oreilly.com]
GE waves developers onto its huge IoT stage
It takes a village to raise an IoT infrastructure. That’s the way it looks as the major players in the internet of things pair up in one partnership after another, while also reaching out to developers from startups and enterprises. by Stephen Lawson [computerworld.com]
Breaking a Monolithic API into Microservices at Uber
In a recent blog post, Uber engineer Emily Reinhold described how they broke a monolithic API into a modular, flexible microservice architecture. She highlighted a few key design and architectural choices that were key to Uber’s migration effort. [infoq.com]
The End of Microservices
A post from the future, where building reliable and scalable production systems has become as easy as, well, writing any other software. Read on to see what the future looks like… Back in 2016, people wrote a lot about “microservices,” sort of like how they wrote a lot about the “information superhighway” back in 1996. by LightStep [lightstep.com]
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