Essential REST API News for 2015/04/06

There is no end to the articles, white papers, and best practices available online to help one get started on their API journey. But as many companies have discovered, the rush of initial success can quickly incur thorny issues of nuance and scale. This week's essential picks are all about dealing with that evolution.

WHY MICROSERVICES?

Microservices aren't simply about API'ing all the things. As Neal Ford writes on the O'Reilly Radar blog, microservices are the first post-DevOps revolution architecture. In the piece he gives four compelling reasons why microservices resonate for both developers and companies.

MICROSERVICE COMPLEXITY

Microservice development is not without it's challenges. Adam Reeve, writing on the Tumblr blog, shares a common complexity that microservice API developers need to consider: partial failure. After detailing the problem he goes on to share several possible solutions, including completely inverting message flows.

REALTIME API OPTIONS

Finally, it is easy to forget that all API communication doesn't need to employ a request-response model. Fanout.com recently had a great piece exploring the various options for Realtime APIs. When people think "realtime" they often think websockets. However, as the article correctly points out, there are other solutions that still achieve realtime results while displaying HTTP characteristics.

APRIL SPEAKING ANNOUNCEMENT

That's it for this week. For what it's worth, I'll be speaking at the 2nd Annual Capital One API Summit at the end of the month. In my talk, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Microservices", I'll try and share a number of the lessons learned in trying to create an API platform within a traditional software development shop. If you're in the McLean, VA area April 27th or 28th let me know - I'd love to have a chat.

Until next time,
Matthew - @libel_vox