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API4C Extras: Toolkits

API4C Extras: Toolkits

Owned by Anton Hrytsenko
Last updated: Dec 02, 2024
1 Outline | 2 Examples | 3 References

Outline

Toolkits simplify API integration at the expense of individual support for each chosen language and platform. There two major kinds of toolkits: SDKs and CLIs.

SDKs simplify integration of applications. SDKs provide idiomatic approach to integrate API due to focus on target language conventions. As well, SDKs streamline propagation of updates due to maturity of dependency management tools for most languages.

CLIs simplify integration of mechanisms. CLIs removes necessity to use programming languages or API clients to integrate API. These toolkits focus on human-first design (see Command Line Interface Guidelines).

For either SDK or CLI is important to define versioning policy that has alignment with API versioning policy. Otherwise, toolkit versioning may confuse consumers.

Opinion
Principles of Web API Design by James Higginbotham (2022) book

API teams must determine how they plan to provide helper libraries, which programming languages they plan to support, and how community- or consumer-generated helper libraries may impact their developer support program.

Examples

  1. AWS: SDKs and Programming Toolkits

  2. Kubernetes: Client libraries and Kubernetes: Command line tool

References

  1. API Integration Patterns (DZone Refcardz)

  2. Surviving API Breakage: Lessons from Modernizing Legacy Systems (Net API Notes)