Leveraging low-code for API-driven development

Create, publish and consume APIs effortlessly with WaveMaker low-code platform

Digital transformation is no longer a buzzword. It has become a way of life for enterprises that want to stay in business. In the current post-pandemic era, business maturity is being evaluated in terms of digital maturity. The road to digital adoption has many emerging technologies in force but working silently behind the scenes and aiding this rapid acceleration, is the unseen ‘super glue’ of all business services - Application Programming Interfaces (API). Technically, APIs have been around for two decades at different levels of operability but it is only in recent years that there has been an explosion of sorts in the usage of APIs.

The demand for multichannel experiences and the everything-on-cloud approach has accelerated the use of APIs. Whether it be composable architecture or microservices, APIs enable the kind of business collaborations that were unheard of before. The partnering of transportation services with a bank, retail shops with payment apps, and banks offering investment opportunities, loans, currency transactions, and payment services on an e-commerce platform have all been made possible by the growth of APIs. Similarly, offloading certain business tasks to ecosystem partners and liberating internal services from silos has been fueled by the synergy between APIs.

API-driven development

API-driven development is the practice of designing and building the API contract first and then developing the application around the contract. Also, known as the API-first approach, this paradigm involves the front-end developers building mocks around APIs and creating refined end-user experiences. In parallel, the back-end developers implement the underlying logic of the APIs.

Dedicated test suites are created around these APIs and, in a way, they foster the idea of test-driven development. In an API lifecycle, the API Publisher designs and deploys the API whereas the API Consumer discovers and integrates the APIs. Each of these roles has multiple functions associated with them and those functions define the characteristics of the API.

API Management with WaveMaker low-code platform

WaveMaker is an open standards-based, developer-centric low-code platform built for modern development practices. The platform enables app developers to play the role of an API Publisher and API consumer. The platform has a natively integrated component called the API Designer which is used to ease the process of designing, creating, and consuming APIs.

• API- first approach: With WaveMaker, a REST API is generated automatically for every service that is imported. These APIs are available for consumption as well as modification through the API designer that can be used for:

1. Exploring the various APIs generated by the platform
2. Testing the APIs
3. Customizing APIs generated by Java services

• API Generator: WaveMaker generates standards-based REST annotations for the above services which can be consumed by API tools for generating documentation using the API generator. The design of these auto-generated REST APIs can be updated further by configuring their description, visibility, method types, and parameter types.

• Open APIs: The platform generates core REST APIs endpoints using Swagger/Open API compliant contracts for database services, Java services, web services, custom code business logic, or even third-party imports. It also to generates UI functionality for Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) operations for REST APIs which conform to Open API specifications. Integrating an existing REST endpoint with any of the 100+ UI widgets offered by WaveMaker is also straightforward without writing a single line of code. Open API helps WaveMaker apps consume other WaveMaker APIs enabling applications within an enterprise to talk to each other.

• API Security & Testing: Security is auto-enabled for an application that can be viewed in the API designer. API security is ensured by securing it with role-based access within the enterprise. API endpoints are also OAuth-protected. Once the REST APIs are defined successfully, they can be tested with the “Test” tab. On successful testing, APIs are published along with the applications.

• Legacy APIs: APIs are invariably REST-based but there remain big remnants of legacy SOAP-based APIs. WaveMaker automatically creates a REST API endpoint for the SOAP services that are imported into an application thus enabling the reuse and modernization of legacy technologies.

WaveMaker offers an API-driven development platform with:

• On-premise/dedicated API management platform
• Rapid delivery of APIS through auto-generation for databases, services, and legacy services
• UI abstraction over APIs
• OAS 2.0 compliance
• Flexible API publishing
• Fine-grained API control using policy templates
• Robust API security using OAuth
• Ability to modernize legacy applications by using SOAP APIs

A developer-friendly low-code platform abstracts the complexities of API management and provides UI-based connectors to work on the endpoints without having to hand-code. WaveMaker scores high on effortless API creation and management with an API-driven approach and an in-built API designer. The platform’s inbuilt adherence to the rules of the API game and its innate ability to convert any service as an API makes the job of all stakeholders so much easier.

APIs have become an inherent part of software building. Programmableweb (API directory) had a listing of mere 54 APIs in 2005. Today there are close to 24000 APIs listed there, and this is excluding the internal enterprise-level APIs and the ones that haven’t been made discoverable yet. Fuelling this expansion are tools and platforms that help us design, manage, test, produce, and consume APIs. Rapidly, easily and securely.

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