4 ms·

Is whatever value people are getting out of client libraries provided by something generic like http://unirest.io http://unirest.io ? When does it make sense t

by pbreit 10y ago

Is whatever value people are getting out of client libraries provided by something generic like http://unirest.io http://unirest.io ? When does it make sense to issue API-specific client libraries for a plain ole RESTful API?

eropple 10y ago
> When does it make sense to issue API-specific client libraries for a plain ole RESTful API? Any time you have a statically-typed language consuming you. Having to write my own Jackson declarations to pull in your API to a JVM project or my own DataContract barf for a CLR one is a quick way to make me hate you, and me hating you means I'm already looking for an alternative that isn't you that gets out of my way.
- pbreit 10y ago
  I sort of thought the opposite, that the client libraries are what is getting in the way.
  - eropple 10y ago
    So you enjoy writing a bunch of boilerplate class files that are manual translations of somebody else's doc?
    - pbreit 10y ago
      No, I just like to get started coding API calls.
cookiecaper 10y ago
All the time? Most "RESTful" (meaningless term, by the way) APIs have a series of convoluted steps that are annoying and tedious to hand-roll. Authentication is a good basic example. Different APIs will have different requirements for authentication headers. Successful authentication frequently requires multiple steps, like an initial request to get a session token. Many APIs will also require your request to be signed according to their specifications, and to stuff that signature in a header with a special name. Every API expects to receive data in its own format. I don't want to have to make a bunch of validators that lay on top of your data model. These can and should be provided, and Swagger makes that automatic. As eropple states, if something is making me do all of that by hand, I'm already looking for something else that will allow me to just say "import project_lib; project_lib.authenticate(); ..." If you're just talking about something that is read-only and that only emits a single field I care about, sure, no need for a library. Something like the free version of ipinfo.io would be a good example. Stuff that's more complicated than that, yes, it needs a client library.

by pbreit 10y ago

eropple 10y ago

> When does it make sense to issue API-specific client libraries for a plain ole RESTful API? Any time you have a statically-typed language consuming you. Having to write my own Jackson declarations to pull in your API to a JVM project or my own DataContract barf for a CLR one is a quick way to make me hate you, and me hating you means I'm already looking for an alternative that isn't you that gets out of my way.

pbreit 10y ago
I sort of thought the opposite, that the client libraries are what is getting in the way.
- eropple 10y ago
  So you enjoy writing a bunch of boilerplate class files that are manual translations of somebody else's doc?
  - pbreit 10y ago
    No, I just like to get started coding API calls.

cookiecaper 10y ago

All the time? Most "RESTful" (meaningless term, by the way) APIs have a series of convoluted steps that are annoying and tedious to hand-roll. Authentication is a good basic example. Different APIs will have different requirements for authentication headers. Successful authentication frequently requires multiple steps, like an initial request to get a session token. Many APIs will also require your request to be signed according to their specifications, and to stuff that signature in a header with a special name. Every API expects to receive data in its own format. I don't want to have to make a bunch of validators that lay on top of your data model. These can and should be provided, and Swagger makes that automatic. As eropple states, if something is making me do all of that by hand, I'm already looking for something else that will allow me to just say "import project_lib; project_lib.authenticate(); ..." If you're just talking about something that is read-only and that only emits a single field I care about, sure, no need for a library. Something like the free version of ipinfo.io would be a good example. Stuff that's more complicated than that, yes, it needs a client library.