Webhooks: Events for RESTful APIs (API-University Series) - Softcover

Biehl, Matthias

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1979717060 ISBN 13: 9781979717069

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017

Synopsis

Got RESTful APIs? Great. API consumers love them. But today, such RESTful APIs are not enough for the evolving expectations of API consumers. Their apps need to be responsive, event-based and react to changes in near real-time.

This results in a new set of requirements for the APIs, which power the apps. APIs now need to provide concepts such as events, notifications, triggers, and subscriptions. These concepts are not natively supported by the REST architectural style. In thios book we show how to engineer RESTful APIs that support events with a webhook infrastructure.

What are the alternatives to webhooks?
We study several approaches for realizing events, such as Polling, Long Polling, Webhooks, HTTP Streaming, Server-Sent Events, WebSockets, WebSub and GraphQL Subscriptions. All of these approaches have their advantages and disadvantages.

Can webhooks communicate in real-time?
We study the non-functional requirements of a webhooks infrastructure, in areas such as security, reliability and developer experience.

How do well-known API providers design webhooks?
We examine the webhook infrastructure provided by GitHub, BitBucket, Stripe, Slack, and Intercom.

With the best practices, case studies, and design templates provided in this book, we want to help you extend your API portfolio with a modern webhook infrastructure. So you can offer both APIs and events that developers love to use.

About this title

From the Author

This book on Webhooks perfectly complements the other books in the API-University Series. Check out the other books in this series on RESTful API Design, API Architecture, GraphQL, Serverless APIs, OAuth, OpenID Connect, and Alexa.

About the Author

Matthias is a techie at heart with a background in APIs, AI, security, and software engineering. At some point, he got a Ph.D.

Nowadays, he uses his technical background to help companies define their digital strategy, execute their transformation agendas, and bring innovations to the market.

He also loves sharing his knowledge in the classroom, at workshops, and in his books. Matthias is an instructor at the API-University.com, publishes a blog on APIs, is the author of several books on APIs, and regularly speaks at technology conferences.

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1979717060
• ISBN 13: 9781979717069
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 130