Aaron Kelly's Blog

APIs

I love APIs. I like the power an API gives you, whether it be to simply return some useful data, or to trigger a complex series of actions behind the scenes.

The need

My initial need for an API was to access a service that could quickly get the data I needed before I started my commute in the morning - I found myself wrangling with a bunch of different phone apps and services. It was difficult to get the results I wanted using what was currently available.

So, I decided to try designing my own API to do all the heavy lifting for me. Initially it was a lot of work. In most cases, I’ve needed to dig into website assests that never intended to see the light of day - parsing JSON data and HTML in order to construct some useful JSON out it.

And I’m happy to say… the hard work is paying off!

Benefits of deploying a personal API

Once an API is deployed, there are a number of immediate benefits:

the API endpoints are callable from anywhere in the world with an internet connection
sending a request to an API endpoint can be a simple request, but the tasks it triggers can be intricate and complex, especially if you’re API is calling out to a service like AWS Lambda to perform some heavy compute instruction

APIs I’ve designed

I’ve created:

a personal API that can perform complex requests to internet services I use frequently: https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/aaronkelly/api
APIs that transform and return plain JSON data for a number of public services which don’t offer a good API service themselves. Below are some static frontend websites that use my APIs a the backend:
custom GUI frontends for my APIs: https://git.sr.ht/~aaronkelly/accomplice
a CLI binary to help me call my APIs easily: https://git.sr.ht/~aaronkelly/api-cli

API Frameworks I’ve tried

I’ve used a bunch of different API frameworks; flask, node.js, AWS API Gateway… I have to say I find flask the easiest to use!

API Testing and Validation (INCUBATING)

It’s taking me some time find a killer solution for testing an API that’s been deployed.

I’m currently using https://assertible.com/, which for the moment is good as separate, always-on service that runs in the cloud.

However I have just found https://github.com/sanathp/statusok, and I think this tool could become part of my CI/CD pipeline - it’s open-source and very simple.