There is an understated art to building good APIs – ones that are easy to integrate with, have high operational availability, offer readily attainable performance insights, and are easy to maintain. But if you have ever had to build an API from scratch, there is no denying that it is hard – and it gets much more complicated when you aim to deliver a quality API.

This guide will take you through the steps to design an API, build it, and deploy it to production. The process will take about 20 to 40 minutes to complete all steps. The project is to build a straightforward API to retrieve product data. You will be provided with the API specification, instructions for what tools to use, relevant scripts and all steps to get the API live.

With APIs taking over, more people are asking: What can I use to create my API? Although there are many different API standards and types, we will primarily focus on REST APIs. An API can be as simple as a single endpoint with one purpose, or it can be much more complex, like the AWS APIs with 1000s of endpoints and 100s of thousands of users. What all of these APIs have in common is that they have to be developed. We like to classify the development of APIs in 3 phases: Design, Build and Host.

A common task for any IT department, or individual developer, is to move data from one location to another. A simple task to do once, but if this must be done many times for many different files (each with its own metadata, file type and data structure), it is a task that can become tedious. Luckily there are many low-code tools that can make this task much more manageable. As an example, Linx allows us to import a file and make the data available elsewhere quickly.

Shopify exposes a REST API for 3rd party applications to integrate with. This guide will cover connecting to the Shopify Admin API with Linx using API Keys in conjunction with the HTTP Basic scheme authentication and some request examples.

IT teams are always wanting to build new applications enabling specific functions for the ease of processes or customers. Sometimes, to balance projects, they allow distributed teams to work on focused targets using reusable assets, templates, and best practices. While decentralizing and democratizing application development helps, managing security can be a task for strategizing different Lines of Business (LoBs) and functional business partners. Enter microservices.

Resources Sample File: MicrosoftGraphTemplate.lsoz (65.8 KB) (download) API Reference: More information on the specifics of authentication can be found in the Microsoft Graph API reference documentation. Microsoft offers a RESTful web service named Microsoft Graph API. This tutorial shows you how to integrate with the Microsoft Graph API and Linx, a low-code development tool.

Using a low-code platform as the back-end for a single page application (SPA) is a nice combination — the SPA can be hosted anywhere, the API is quick and easy to develop, and they can evolve independently of each other e.g. if you need a native app just develop the UI and use the same API.