I’m working on a project in which I need to implement an API in my application, but I’m not too sure what the best procedures and practices are. Specifically, I’d appreciate it if someone could tell me:
What are the main steps to implement an API successfully in a live application?
How do I handle authentication and error checking when implementing an API?
Are there any best practices or any tools available to test API implementations?
Can you suggest some good tutorials or resources for API integration?
I also read an article on enterprise collaboration software that talked about integrating APIs to enhance team workflows and communication. It led me to think: How can APIs be used to enhance collaboration in enterprise software? If I’m using collaboration tools, do I need to pay attention to certain APIs to enhance team productivity?
Would love to hear your thoughts or any insights you have on these topics!
your questions could probably fill a few books, but just some ideas / approaches:
What are the main steps to implement an API successfully in a live application?
I’d look into security:
if you have multiple different integrations, you can use multiple users with specific roles
check something like Fail2Ban and similar solutions to secure your API in the first place. Additionally, you can whitelist specific IPs that integrate into your CRM via firewalls.
https is a given and probably doesn’t need to be mentioned anymore
The rest is mostly like in development - with code / logic cleaned up.
How do I handle authentication and error checking when implementing an API?
Error checking and logging can fill another book. Out of experience, fire and forget mentality will sooner or later revenge itself.
Make errors visible, monitor data quality and integration successes / failures.
Use queues if possible, that you can restart on demand.
I’ve you’ve got a lot of integration, look into message brokers like Apache Kafka or something like Redis
Logging shouldn’t be done in the CRM but could be, if you don’t have a lot of traffic. If you are using a queue system in the CRM, you can utilize this for logging at the same time and easily built data integration quality reports on that data.
Are there any best practices or any tools available to test API implementations?
My go-to tools are now usually Postman for testing and n8n for smaller projects, Python data pipelines with ETL / ELT for bigger projects.
That changed over time - before there was more Talent, MuleESB and other approaches
enterprise collaboration software
Which exactly?
I’m currently looking into a deeper integration between SuiteCRM and Nextcloud.
But there are plenty of others, and they’d change with the focus (customer service, marketing, sales, SCM, IT, …)