Developing Brilliant and Powerful APIs in Ruby & Python

#BrilliantAPIs
Developing Brilliant and
Powerful APIs in Ruby & Python

#BrilliantAPIs
Housekeeping
• Session is being recorded
• Email once presentation is posted
• Continuous Q&A
–Twitter: #BrilliantAPIs @Ready_API
–Goto Webinar chat panel
–community.smartbear.com

#BrilliantAPIs
Introductions
Shelby Switzer
Notion
Queen of API Engineering
Paul Bruce
SmartBear
API Team Product Manager

#BrilliantAPIs
What we’ll cover
• API languages, why?
• APIs in Ruby
– Rails 5
– Grape
• APIs in Python
– Django
– Flask
• Docs / M2M / Swagger
• What else is there?
– Testing: function, load,
security
– API virtualization /
sandboxing
– API ecosystem

#BrilliantAPIs
APIs in language X?
• Considerations
– What does my team already know?
– How flush is the hiring market?
– What is sustainable long-term?
– What’s easier for *everyone* to deal with?
• Why in Ruby and Python?
• Why not in something else?

#BrilliantAPIs
• Java (lots of overhead)
• .NET C# / VB / F# (proprietary stack)
• PHP (wild west)
• Node.js (because javascript)
• C++ (how old are you?)
• GO (fledgling*)
• R (too mathematical) (WTH do I mean by that?)
Why today not other languages?
* https://www.quora.com/What-reasons-are-there-to-not-use-Go-programming-language

#BrilliantAPIs
Ruby with
@switzerly

#BrilliantAPIs
Ruby terminology
• Gem => an external library
• Bundle => pack up all dependencies
• Rack => HTTP pipeline and req/resp processor
•Rails, Sinatra, Grape
• .rb => code
• Scaffolding => resource MVC generation
• Rake => make-like build utility

#BrilliantAPIs
So, Ruby & Rails: a love story
• Ruby: an awesome programming language
• Rails: a web framework for Ruby
• Ruby on Rails
– MVC pattern
– Convention over
configuration
– ActiveRecord

#BrilliantAPIs
Caching
• Key-based caching: cache_key
• ETags & conditional GETs:
stale?(last_modified: @book.updated_at.utc, etag: @book.cache_key)

#BrilliantAPIs
Testing
• Test::Unit or Rspec
• Unit tests on controllers, models, services
• Request tests for endpoints
• http://matthewlehner.net/rails-api-testing-guidelines/

#BrilliantAPIs
Hypermedia
ActiveModel::Serializer.config.adapter =
ActiveModel::Serializer::Adapter::JsonApi
See also: gem ‘roar’

#BrilliantAPIs
Documentation
• Swagger gem: https://github.com/richhollis/swagger-docs
• Easy to integrate directly in your code
• Generate docs with a rake task:
rake swagger:docs

#BrilliantAPIs
Rails 5 API: Getting Started
1. Install Rails 5:
git clone https://github.com/rails/rails.git
cd rails/
bundle install
2. Generate API:
bundle exec railties/exe/rails new ../books_app --edge --dev --api
3. Create Scaffold:
bundle exec rails generate scaffold books title description:text page_count:integer
4. Migrate the database:
bundle exec rake db:migrate

#BrilliantAPIs
API in Ruby: Example

#BrilliantAPIs
Ruby+Grape: Sweet, not Sour
• Great for small services
• Can be used with Rails, Sinatra, or alone
• Support for:
– Versioning
– Validation
– (Re)routing
– Error handling / exceptions
• Very code-focused, less data/convention
• Documentation? Boom.
http://www.sitepoint.com/build-great-apis-grape/
http://www.rubydoc.info/gems/grape/

#BrilliantAPIs
Grape: Getting Started
1. Install Grape
gem 'grape'
bundle install
2. Create an API file: api.rb
class API < Grape::API
end
3. Create a rackup file (config.ru) to run the API app
require './api'
run API

#BrilliantAPIs
Python with
@paulsbruce

#BrilliantAPIs
Similarities in Ruby & Python
Lots of “MVC-like” commonalities
models | views | logical control
Templates vs. ViewSets
Routing (routes file vs. urls file)
Database access (ActiveRecord vs. Django data model)
Access control / permissions
Rate limiting
...

#BrilliantAPIs
Python: Flask & Django
Fully featured*
but a bit more work
Limited, but
gets you there fast
* Gypsy jazz legend, Jean Baptiste "Django" Reinhardt

#BrilliantAPIs
Python: Flask
Install Python.
pip install Flask-API
Create a new directory
Create a .py file
Start typing
Easy to get started, if you know REST
Deployment: WSGI, FastCGI, …
Database access: up to you
from flask.ext.api import FlaskAPI
app = FlaskAPI(__name__)
@app.route("/example/", methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def example():
if request.method == 'GET':
return {'request data': request.data}
elif request.method == 'POST':
return '', status.HTTP_204_NO_CONTENT
raise exceptions.NotFound()
python ./yourfile.py

#BrilliantAPIs
API in Flask: Example

#BrilliantAPIs
Python: Django
Conventions for common API patterns and scaffolding.
Models Serializers
Permissions
Views
Routing Browsing

#BrilliantAPIs
Django: Getting Started
Install Python.
pip install Django
pip install DjangoRESTFramework
Find a Python-savvy editor:
• PyCharm Community
• PyScripter (Windows Only)
• PyDev (Eclipse plugin)
django-admin startproject …
cd …
python manage.py startapp …
INSTALLED_APPS = (
“rest_framework”,
“...”)
python manage.py syncdb
(write some implementation code)
python manage.py runserver

#BrilliantAPIs
API in Django: Example

#BrilliantAPIs
Django vs. Flask
Django
DjangoCon, increasing interest over time, Books and
online tutorials; great for CRUD, overload for some
Flask
Easy to get started and create, maintenance is hard.
Used by Pinterest & Linkedin

#BrilliantAPIs
Django + Swagger:
Why? Because others, that’s why.
django-rest-swagger.readthedocs.org
PyYAML (mileage may vary)
INSTALLED_APPS += ‘rest_framework_swagger’
patterns += url(r'^docs/', include('rest_framework_swagger.urls')),
...and poof!
/docs/ /docs/api-docs

#BrilliantAPIs
Lots of APIs: what’s wrong with that?
Microservices
lots of “little” distributed bits
Common problems:
Spaghetti code is imminent.
Unit testing is not enough.
Functional, integration, performance,
and security testing are even more
necessary than ever!
Hypermedia
discrete operations / behaviors

#BrilliantAPIs
API quality across language barriers

#BrilliantAPIs
Ready! API: testing & sandboxing

#BrilliantAPIs
What we’ve learned
Ruby+Rails == Awesome for big projects
Python == Great for as-needed APIs & scripting
Importance of documentation (human &
M2M)
Ready! API bridges gaps across technologies
Links to blogs and examples by email

#BrilliantAPIs
Thank You!
Shelby Switzer
@switzerly
shelbyswitzer.com
• Paul Bruce
• @paulsbruce
• paulsbruce.io

Developing Brilliant and Powerful APIs in Ruby & Python

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