Developing Brilliant and Powerful APIs in Ruby & Python
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This document summarizes a presentation about developing brilliant APIs in Ruby and Python. It discusses choosing between Ruby and Python for APIs and frameworks like Rails, Grape, Flask and Django. It also covers API documentation, testing, and API sandboxing tools. The presentation concludes that Ruby+Rails is best for large projects while Python is great for smaller, as-needed APIs and scripting. It emphasizes the importance of documentation and how Ready! API can help test and sandbox APIs across technologies.
![#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](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/developingbrilliantandpowerfulapisinrubypythonv3-151204143805-lva1-app6892/85/Developing-Brilliant-and-Powerful-APIs-in-Ruby-Python-21-320.jpg)
Developing Brilliant and Powerful APIs in Ruby & Python
- 1. #BrilliantAPIs Developing Brilliant and Powerful APIs in Ruby & Python
- 2. #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
- 3. #BrilliantAPIs Introductions Shelby Switzer Notion Queen of API Engineering Paul Bruce SmartBear API Team Product Manager
- 4. #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
- 5. #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?
- 6. #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
- 8. #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
- 9. #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
- 10. #BrilliantAPIs Caching • Key-based caching: cache_key • ETags & conditional GETs: stale?(last_modified: @book.updated_at.utc, etag: @book.cache_key)
- 11. #BrilliantAPIs Testing • Test::Unit or Rspec • Unit tests on controllers, models, services • Request tests for endpoints • http://matthewlehner.net/rails-api-testing-guidelines/
- 12. #BrilliantAPIs Hypermedia ActiveModel::Serializer.config.adapter = ActiveModel::Serializer::Adapter::JsonApi See also: gem ‘roar’
- 13. #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
- 14. #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
- 15. #BrilliantAPIs API in Ruby: Example
- 16. #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/
- 17. #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
- 19. #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 ...
- 20. #BrilliantAPIs Python: Flask & Django Fully featured* but a bit more work Limited, but gets you there fast * Gypsy jazz legend, Jean Baptiste "Django" Reinhardt
- 21. #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
- 22. #BrilliantAPIs API in Flask: Example
- 23. #BrilliantAPIs Python: Django Conventions for common API patterns and scaffolding. Models Serializers Permissions Views Routing Browsing
- 24. #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
- 25. #BrilliantAPIs API in Django: Example
- 26. #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
- 27. #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
- 28. #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
- 29. #BrilliantAPIs API quality across language barriers
- 30. #BrilliantAPIs Ready! API: testing & sandboxing
- 31. #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
- 32. #BrilliantAPIs Thank You! Shelby Switzer @switzerly shelbyswitzer.com • Paul Bruce • @paulsbruce • paulsbruce.io