APIs are considered as the foundation of software development providing a continuous stream of information and a chance for mid-sized companies like Matrix Marketers to grow rapidly. With APIs, developers send queries to a server and get access to data or even plug web applications to an up-to-date data-source.

In recent trends of software Development, APIs have emerged as an important source of data in advanced software development. APIs allow developers to take advantage of open data and automation; so that everyone can create up-to-date applications, as apps can be plugged directly to the data servers, and have access to live data.

But here is my issue, The APIs working is to be continuously monitored for full customization and updating. If I go with an automatization, there is a risk of a crash when major updates occur, such as indicators names revision, series discontinuity, etc. And if I don’t use automation, that means I have to constantly monitor any data update. The Matrix Marketers developers are exploring the right approach to access the APIs

Continuous Service: Local Backup and URL Switch

A local backup of data with the use of APIs is must because if the local request to API fails, the local data will be used i.e. JSON file including JavaScript. Let’s see the step wise implementation of API.

1st Step: Create A Local JSON File

Create a JSON file carrying methods to invoke API.

2nd Step: A Switching Mechanism

A JavaScript send the initial request to the API with the method get JSON. If it succeeds; the chart will use the requested URL data. Otherwise, local file will be selected:

Last Step: Create a Data File with High charts

To create the interactive charts, use High charts library; as It is very easy to implement and can be customized with CSS. To check the API status, use flag, if that is blue that means API is ready to work or if it turns red then it means the API will make use of local data. This way, I will know if there’s any issue and eventually update the script.

The above three steps allow you to use APIs in your application. The main point to consider here is trying that you API works in automation mode because, in a case of local access, the data has to be updated manually.

Handling application level failures for business-critical apps on the cloud.

An application running with the help of API or without may fail anytime. The challenge is how do you architect an API that has reduced chances of failure, minimal impact and can recover fast for business-critical applications.

• Apart from hardware failures, there are a bunch of other reasons for the service failures:
• erroneous deployment procedures like wrong configuration files being deployed code
• encryption key being corrupted or lost.
• To avoid above-mentioned failures, follow the given practices.
• Split service into Test Site / LIVE Site and expose Test to customers.

To handle complex business applications, a sandbox (test) environment should be used which is exposed to customers to integrate with their development or staging. Always roll out code changes first to the “test” account. The service should have architected in a way to accommodate this, preferably at a domain level.

• Let it run for some time with customers testing it with their sandbox environment.
• Then push to LIVE accounts after validation.
• With API & code being tested, most issues can be captured here.

This is very much applicable for services where customers interact via API. An example is our own service that provides a Test and Live account for customers.

For business applications, data can be segmented at the customer level. And hence can be architected to run as mini-services. Each mini-service should serve a set of users and be deployed in different regions. If the services need to interact among themselves, they should do so as if interacting with a third-party service.

Ideally, the service could be deployed independently, with this architecture.

Before, it was difficult to have such distributed setup for small players. Now it is all the easier, where you can have smaller services deployed across regions.

The cost should not increase radically as instead of a few high-end servers you would be having servers with lesser capacity. An additional advantage is that latency due to table schema updates for databases that lock+copy (like MySQL) would be lesser as you are Deployment and monitoring tools need to be in place though.

This allows you to do: Staggered update across regions.

By staggering, the chances of noticing an issue & fixing it is much higher. And your entire customer base will not be affected.

Everything should be backed up/versioned.

If you use managed database service like Amazon RDS there is an option to recover data up to 5 minutes. If you manage your own DB, you need to go for incremental backups.

The delayed replica is another good option.

The encrypted data should be maintained with the updated versioning.There is no point in having backed up encrypted data if you don’t have the similar backup process for keys.

Update in sets

Even within the same mini-service, rolling out a key update should preferably be staggered.

Finally, all these can only help you to mitigate the issues. Monitoring & managing of the server is required to be robust to capture any failures to act upon it immediately.

Conclusion

As a SAAS startup that is gaining traction, not all of these need to be in place while starting out, but there has to be a plan to make a natural progression towards this. The companies like Matrix Marketers who are developing and using APIs for a long now adopt both traditional and now cloud methods to make use of APIs in building robust applications. As we have seen in the above discussion, Building and deploying API in a meaningful manner is quite tricky. If you are planning to build applications using APIs, hire our expert developers who are proficient enough to develop latest techniques in API creation and management.