The information covered in this part has been mostly theoretical. You learned about endpoint design, filtering, searching, sorting, pagination, and versioning. But how would you build one of these APIs yourself? 🤔
Discover the Best Known Frameworks for Building an API
The process of building an API depends on the programming language or tool you use. We've covered best practices on how to design one so that you’re well prepared once you dive into a language. Here are some popular tools and frameworks that developers use:
Express.js (JavaScript)
Express uses Node.js and JavaScript and is a minimal and fast framework. It's very flexible and supports full applications as well as REST APIs. The biggest drawback is there’s no defined way of doing things, which can be tough for beginners.
Ruby on Rails (Ruby)
Ruby on Rails is built into Ruby and is a popular framework among many developers. It's considered a "magic behind the curtains" framework because it hides a lot of complexity, which helps beginners get started with web development more easily. There are many third-party plugins (called Ruby gems) available to use, and the Rails developer community is very large, with tons of online tutorials. The learning curve of Rails becomes really steep once you dive deeper into the framework (to understand the magic behind it).
Django (Python)
Django uses Python for web development, and it's used by some big names such as Google, YouTube, and Instagram. Django Rest Framework is easy to use when building your REST APIs with Django. It has a steeper learning curve for beginners but comes with great built-in features like authentication and messaging.
Flask (Python)
Flask uses Python for web and REST API development. It's a minimalist framework, and is simple to learn and use. Flask comes with fewer built-in features than Django, but enables developers to have more say in the extra tools they use.
Spring (Java)
Spring is a web framework that uses Java, a very popular language. It’s used by websites like Wix, TicketMaster, and BillGuard. It has a lot of related tools that boost its performance and let you easily scale your business, but the learning curve could be steep, especially if you don’t know Java.
AWS API Gateway
AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda is a way to create and use REST APIs using mostly a user interface (so less code!). It lets you easily integrate your website with all of AWS services and is easy to scale and manage more requests with their infrastructure. You have to pay per request that users make to your servers, but you get the first million free! (Watch out, though – request numbers add up fast!)
The tool you choose should ultimately depend on the needs of your application. Make sure to do the appropriate research on the available frameworks and libraries so that you pick the right one for your needs. Once your API is built and deployed to the web, you can use Postman, as we have throughout this course, to test it out!
Let’s Recap!
There are plenty of tools and frameworks you can use to put these concepts into practice.
Make sure to do your research when picking which API tool is best for you.
Great work – you’ve reached the end of this course. Head to the next chapter for a quick review.
