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This is awesome. As someone who's built many APIs, I have always wondered how Stripe managed all those versions. I knew their code couldn't just be littered wit

by atonse 9y ago

This is awesome. As someone who's built many APIs, I have always wondered how Stripe managed all those versions. I knew their code couldn't just be littered with if/thens. This is a really smart way to do it. One question is, over the years, wouldn't you add a lot of overhead to each request in transformation? Or do you have a policy where you expire versions that are more than 2 years old, etc? (skimmed through parts of the article so my apologies if you already answered this)

djur 9y ago
Assuming that Stripe's userbase grows over time and that their new API versions offer features that are useful to a significant portion of their existing userbase, I would expect the majority of requests at any time to be for a recent API version that needs few (or no) transformations. This is especially likely considering that Stripe provides official client libraries (which are presumably up to date) for a lot of languages. Stripe probably tracks the relative usage of each API version. If they found a lot of their users were stuck on an old version, that would point to a bigger problem than just some per-request overhead.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  Stripe probably tracks the relative usage of each API version. If they found a lot of their users were stuck on an old version, that would point to a bigger problem than just some per-request overhead. I'm not sure how true that is. In my experience, integrations with online payment services are mostly write-only code: you do it, you test it, and then no-one goes near it once it's in production unless there's some sort of known bug or security issue. Literally the last thing I want to do with working, tested code integrating with the service that collects money for a business is make unnecessary changes that might break it. I know several businesses that use versions of APIs that are several years old with services like Stripe, because they have no need to change.
jakobegger 9y ago
All your questions are answered in the article: - They apply transformations to convert responses from the current version to the previous version, step by step. - This means the overhead for old versions only applies to consumers of the old version. - They support all versions going back 6 years.

by atonse 9y ago

djur 9y ago

Assuming that Stripe's userbase grows over time and that their new API versions offer features that are useful to a significant portion of their existing userbase, I would expect the majority of requests at any time to be for a recent API version that needs few (or no) transformations. This is especially likely considering that Stripe provides official client libraries (which are presumably up to date) for a lot of languages. Stripe probably tracks the relative usage of each API version. If they found a lot of their users were stuck on an old version, that would point to a bigger problem than just some per-request overhead.

Silhouette 9y ago
Stripe probably tracks the relative usage of each API version. If they found a lot of their users were stuck on an old version, that would point to a bigger problem than just some per-request overhead. I'm not sure how true that is. In my experience, integrations with online payment services are mostly write-only code: you do it, you test it, and then no-one goes near it once it's in production unless there's some sort of known bug or security issue. Literally the last thing I want to do with working, tested code integrating with the service that collects money for a business is make unnecessary changes that might break it. I know several businesses that use versions of APIs that are several years old with services like Stripe, because they have no need to change.

jakobegger 9y ago

All your questions are answered in the article: - They apply transformations to convert responses from the current version to the previous version, step by step. - This means the overhead for old versions only applies to consumers of the old version. - They support all versions going back 6 years.