API Integration Best Practices: Processes and Approaches

API (Application Programming Interface) is crucial for having a more organized, efficient, and easy-to-scale ecosystem that can meet all of your business and client needs. Any business that uses digital software to run their physical or fully digital business should know more about API integration best practices. That being said, in the next minute you’ll discover what an API is, how to implement APIs and connect two or more applications, and how to choose the right APIs for your business or project. Whether you have tech knowledge or not, this will help you understand the basics and get you started.

What is an API?

In simple terms, an API is an easy way that different systems or applications communicate and exchange data with each other. The main purpose of an API is to connect smaller apps to your app to help you with different business purposes (customer service, payments, reviews, etc.).

For example, Uber may seem like one big individual app, but there are several smaller apps that contribute to booking trips for its users. One API is for the payment, one finds for your current location, one helps with the reviews, and many other such integrations that help their business run accordingly. 

The process for a smooth and hassle-free API integration

To successfully integrate one or more APIs to help you with different functionalities and data, you must follow these next 3 essential steps our developers use to deliver high-quality and fast API integrations. Bug- and glitch-free during and after the integration.

Planning and Design

• First, have a clear understanding of what functionalities or features you need and want the APIs to accomplish. Do you need a payment system? Better data flow? Automate the sending of your emails? These are just a few examples of a need you might have.
• Find APIs that meet your exact needs, whether that be a third-party API or your own developed one. An already-made API only provides the integrated functionality and allows limited control over it, but saves more time and resources compared to creating your own API.
• Develop a detailed design that will later decide how the API integration will work. Define the endpoints, data formats (JSON or XML), authentication methods, and any other protocol that is needed.
• Secure the APIs by having API keys, encryption, and limited access to protect your sensitive data.
• Understand your API documentation, such as the API endpoints, request and response formats, error codes, and usage examples. This will help you in the actual integration process and for future maintenance.

Integration and Implementation

• Depending on your API integration, set up the development environment, which includes setting up servers and databases, and install any specific libraries or SDKs that are necessary for your infrastructure.
• Start writing the code in your app to make API calls, handle responses, and integrate the API’s functionality into the existing system. This includes error handling, which will fix any unexpected issues and ensure your data will transform into a format your app can use.
• Use version control systems like ‘Git’ to track progress, communicate with developers, and manage any code changes.

Testing and Monitoring

• Test each integration to make sure there are no issues and everything works as expected. You can do test APi calls and verify the responses to ensure the systems communicate properly.
• To check your systems even further, have user acceptance testing, which includes having real users use and test your functionalities to make sure they work and they meet your business requirements.
• If everything works well and your application is deployed, all you have to do is continuously monitor the integration and check and fix errors by having logs.

How do I discover and select the right APIs for my project?

“Okay, I understand what an API is and how to integrate one, but how do I even know where to find and which API to choose?” Well, since there are many different APIs on the market, each having its specific features, compliances, security, reliability, etc., we will try to make this process as easy as possible, providing you with a simple check list of things you should do and consider when looking and deciding on which APIs to integrate.

Identify Your Requirements

First of all, you need to clearly know what you need an API to accomplish, whether that be data retrieval, automating tasks, content management, or any other functionality. Unless you already have a tech team doing this for you, you need to know which data formats you need (JSON, XML), the supported coding languages for your application, and to ensure compatibility with your current systems.

Research Available APIs

Check API directories like GitHub, ProgrammableWeb, or RapidAPI to discover a large catalogue of available APIs that match your specific requirements. Also, you can see what other similar businesses are using to provide a more seamless user experience. If some APIs are successfully used in your industry, this can be a good sign that they are reliable and worth testing. If you prefer word of mouth and direct opinions from other people, check developer forums where people are sharing their experiences and recommendations with different APIs on the market.

Compare API Features and Documentations

Once you have a list of APIs you might want to try, to narrow the list even further, compare the features and choose the one that provides the most amount of specific functionalities you need. Besides functionality, each API has its own documentation that can help you make a more informed decision and help you later in the integration process.

Check Security and Compliance

It doesn’t matter if an API has all you were looking for if it doesn’t have secure protocols (e.g., HTTPS, OAuth) to protect your sensitive data, prevent breaches, and maintain your system integrity. Verify that the API is compliant with industry standards and regulations, so you don’t bump into any major compliance problems along the way.

Test the API

As you mostly do with any other software or product, you first test it and make sure it smoothly reflects what you were looking for. You can do this with APIs by using their free trials and using it in sandbox environments to see how easy it is to integrate and if the functionalities work as expected.

If you are still at an early stage with your software and are not yet sure what will work and what not, you should consider developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test your idea in real-world scenarios with real users and see if it’s worth investing further. See how to build an MVP to discover more about what an MVP is, why it is essential for startups, and how to actually build one.

What security measures should be implemented when integrating APIs?

When integrating APIs, one of the key aspects you need to consider are robust security measures that will permanently protect your system and data. The main goal of this is to not only keep your system and data protected but also your employees, prospects, clients, and partners safe from unauthorized access. Think of it like having a warehouse stored with valuable items; you need to have special impenetrable locks that only certain people can access. Before any items get into your warehouse, you need to check and ensure they’re not containing harmful items that could damage your warehouse stocks. These are just some analogies so you can get a clear picture of the importance and how security measures act. Let’s dive deeper into more of these security measures that you should implement.

Verify Your API’s Security Standards

Earlier we talked about checking if the wanted API provider meets security requirements before choosing to integrate it. If you somehow already have chosen an API, now it’s the time to check their documentation and ensure they take the most efficient precautions to keep your data secure. Check things like:

• Their authentication and authorization mechanisms
• Encryption methods and policies
• Data privacy and compliance

Implement Strong Error Handling Protocols

Sometimes, your integration can unexpectedly have errors that can put your system at risk and have your sensitive data get leaked. This can be solved by having usual messages like “Something went wrong” when an error occurs instead of displaying details about your system that could be used by attackers to exploit it. Also, integrate monitoring tools that can keep your team updated when any certain issue occurs, so they can identify and fix any issue fast and effectively.

Protect API Keys and Tokens

Think of API keys and tokens like passwords for accessing your APIs. If these are compromised, unwanted users can gain control and make API calls on your behalf. This can easily lead to having your sensitive data exposed and put your employees and your clients at risk. You can avoid this by storing your API keys and tokens in secure vaults like AWS Secrets Manager or Azure Key Vault. Avoid hardcoding them into your system architecture and occasionally generate new keys and tokens.

Utilize Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

RBAC is the action of only allowing users access to the parts of the API they need to use, which can minimize the risk of unauthorized access and compromise your employees and clients. With this tool, you can assign roles such as “Admin” (which can have full access to the API), “Viewer” (which can only read the data), etc. Therefore, assign roles and permissions to each user so they can only access and perform specific tasks they need. 

Limit Data Access and Synchronization

Similar to the last tip, this also applies the principle of least privilege by limiting data access. Without this, you have a high risk of displaying sensitive information through your API, which can lead to data breaches. Filter your data or apply a field-level permission technique so the only data and fields that get access are those that are necessary for its functionality. 

API Integration best practices

Everybody wants to speed up the process and wants to integrate the API as soon as possible. There are a couple of third-party API integration best practices that will definitely help you speed up the API integration process flow a little bit.

• Use SDKs and Libraries

Most of the third-party APIs offer Software Development Kits (SDKs), which provide pre-written functions that simplify the whole API integration process by making API calls, handling authentication, and processing responses. On the other side, Authentication Libraries will handle standard authentication methods like OAuth, JWT, etc. for you. Many of these libraries have already been tested and can effectively save you a lot of time in the API integration process.

• Start with API Testing Tools

One of the most important API integration steps is testing the APIs before integrating them. To make this even easier, use tools like Postman or Insomnia that allow you to quickly test API endpoints and get a clearer picture of the structure of requests and responses. All of this without writing any code.

Want to improve API performance?

Feel free to ask any questions you might have. Our experts will be glad to assist you.

Get consultation

Pavlo Boiko

CEO

• Document as You Go

Upon publishing the API, there may be unexpected events, and the integration could have problems or needs to be improved. Developers might not remember all of the details regarding the actual build of the API and not be able to fix or improve it. Therefore, it’s crucial to document the whole API integration process.

• Midularize Your Code

Have your API integration code written in a modular way. How do you do this? You separate different functionalities or features into different functions or filters. This will make your code look cleaner and easier to maintain and find necessary data.

API Integration Best Practices: You’re all set!

These third-party API integration best practices are not for the tech-savvy and are not hard to follow for an usual business owner, so don’t sweat it; you can easily integrate an API by yourself. But keep in mind that this is not something to overlook; APIs are crucial for ensuring your business runs smoothly. From connecting your systems to automating workflows and having seamless communication between all of your software. Take your time to do this right, don’t rush things, and follow the steps thoughtfully. 

Want to integrate and apply these third-party API integration best practices, but you don’t even have fully developed software (or none at all)? Check out our software development outsourcing services to help you speed up the process and get straight to integrating your preferred APIs.

Questions? Answers!

What are the steps in API integration?

There are 7 third-party API integration best practices that need to be carefully executed in order to have a successful and seamless API integration. Starting with defining your requirements, know which API version you plan to use, which API functionality you need, and what API you want to expose from the integration.

The second step is understanding your API documentation. Moving on, enhance your development environment, such as the tools and libraries you’re going to use and the environment variables in which you’re going to store sensitive information. Now it’s time to implement the integration by starting with a simple request and writing code to handle API responses.

After the integration is done, carefully test the integration to make sure everything runs smoothly. Perform unit and integration testing. From now on, all you have to do is constantly monitor and maintain the API updated and error-free.

It’s very important to have documentation of your whole API integration process for future reference and maintenance.

What techniques can help me with API integration?

To make the whole process easier, save time, and get better results, the best thing you can do is not trust APIs. This may sound very general, so here’s a quick breakdown of how to never fully rely on APIs and always have precaution measures.

First of all, before deciding on integrating any APIs, read the whole documentation of the specific third-party API. Make sure you understand how to use it, any restrictions it might have, request limits, authorization tokens, and all the important details you can find.

The documentation does not fully guarantee that everything is secure and will integrate seamlessly. Test each API before using them. After testing, everything may or may not work well, but in each of these cases, check the status of API response codes and provide an appropriate error handler.

If everything so far looks good, to future-proof yourself from any errors or system breaches, constantly monitor and log every request you make to the API. Whether that be errors, events, response times, or any other action.

How can automation tools help streamline API testing and improve efficiency?

Automation tools can highly reduce manual work when it comes to testing and improving the efficiency of the API integration process. There are automation tools for almost any stage of the integration process, such as running tests that ensure the functionality of the APIs, tools that simulate real-world scenarios that test API scalability, some that detect and help you prevent errors that manually you might not catch, and many more.

Doing everything manually can become overwhelming, and sometimes impossible since the chances of missing critical issues grow as your API does. Besides missing eros, this can be very time- and energy-consuming and very difficult to scale since it limits your ability to adapt to new API versions or increased traffic.

These API tools help you with those matters, providing you with continuous testing and feedback, so your API can remain secure and effective even when you’re not actually investing time in it.