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Ask Slashdot: Best API Management System?

Posted by Soulskill on from the notepad-and-lots-of-coffee dept.

An anonymous reader writes: I've landed a summer internship with a software firm that has a library of APIs available to current and potential customers. One of my team's tasks is to make recommendations on how to improve the developer portal, which not only provides a testing sandbox and documentation, but is also a source of sales leads for the company's business units. Mashery was the original choice for this task, but there are some limitations: some types of customers don't need to see all of the API in the library, and different business units have different goals for this developer platform when it comes to sales and marketing. What solutions work best to provide scaleable, customizable access?

9 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. You are Doomed by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and different business units have different goals for this developer platform when it comes to sales and marketing

    When you let sales and marketing drive technical decisions, brace for failure.

    Years ago I worked for mini-computer maker Data General (a.k.a "Data Who"). One of the things that took down that company was the the engineers, architects and designers built amazing technology that was far ahead of anyone else. Then marketing would come in and say "Fantastic! Great Job! Now we just need you to remove this feature and that feature, because. as it is. this machine out preforms that bigger, older, more expensive system that we are already selling." Look where that company is now.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:You are Doomed by GerryGilmore · · Score: 2

      As a former DG-er myself, I can only agree. The MicroNova *could* have been part of a real breakout for DG, but the bigger iron guys shuddered at the lower price of it so it remained a red-headed stepchild, clearing the way for TI and Intel. After that, its 63077 for DG. :-)

  2. Oh fuck off.... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2, Informative

    Was your job at Dice Holdings, Incorporated, Mr. "Anonymous" Reader?

  3. Re:Dice, please suck my dick. by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2

    I wouldn't be so sure of that. If they are as competent at blowjobs as they are at UI design, you'll probably end up with a chunk of your cock bitten off.

  4. Obviously by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, obviously any API management system needs a "share" button at the bottom of each screen so you can share your favorite API methods with your friends on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  5. Actual Suggestions by icars99 · · Score: 2

    I've seen a few very good ways of doing this, but recently two products have grabbed my attention. Apigee.com used to have a amazing free service for exploring apis for various sites (like facebook and others that I've had to use). I can't seem to find a good link to it just now. However the product that I use at work for this is Postman (www.getpostman.com)

  6. Let me fix one requirement for you by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> some types of customers don't need to see all of the API in the library

    Don't try to go down that road. If you start hiding functions through obscurity, they will pop out anyway (through code samples, forums, reverse engineering, pentesting, etc.) and will only lead to bad things (developers pissed at you for "crappy, incomplete documentation," customers laughing at you for "trying to hide the best stuff," salespeople people yelling at you for not exposing something you've already written but they didn't know they needed until they walked out of a customer meeting, top executives yelling at everyone when a security researcher finds a big flaw in a rarely used function call that everyone forgot about).

    Signed,
    Dude With 15 Years Experience With Web APIs
    (Who Has Had Much Of This Happen To Him Or His Company)

  7. Are you sure you want an API management system? by Saanvik · · Score: 2

    Sounds like you are just looking for a good documentation tool, one that allows people to test the APIs live.

    If that's what you want, then you should look at API Blueprint, RAML, and Swagger.

  8. A hypermedia API is self-documenting by diamondmagic · · Score: 2

    The Web is designed to not need APIs or dedicated documentation. You might have heard of REST - it's a set of constraints on network architecture designs, which are: client-server protocol, layered interface, caching, stateless connections, code-on-demand (e.g. Javascript), and a uniform interface (e.g. HTML). REST is defined by the principal author of HTTP, Roy T. Fielding.

    Lots of people call themselves RESTful (Amazon, Twitter) but aren't even close. A RESTful service is pretty much just like a website: You enter at an entry point, then start following hyperlinks and filling out forms to manipulate the state of your client and the server (respectively).

    If you have an existing plain-old-HTTP API, you might want to build a hypertext interface on top of it that users can browse and submit documents with. Use a hypermedia data format like JSON-LD, Hydra, or JSON Hyper-schema to expose machine-readable hypertext. HTML is perfectly fine too, and preferable if you want to navigate the API with a Web browser.

    See:

    http://martinfowler.com/articl...

    https://web.archive.org/web/20...

    http://www.amazon.com/RESTful-...

    --
    Wonder what the public key field is for?