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I don’t think API wrapper libraries add that much value and I usually only use them if it’s absolutely necessary. Most APIs are just REST calls…

• janetacarr 4y ago
  This is mostly true tbh. But API wrappers handling things like retries, pagination, client-side business logic, and coercion from JSON. Having to account for all of that for two API calls is somewhat tedious and repetitive, and I'm sure we've all solved those problems at least a dozen times.
  • huahaiy 4y ago
    Retries, JSON coercions and so on do have Clojure libraries for them, so I am not sure why you want to solve these problems yourself, let alone a dozen times. Really not sure what your exact point is.
• the_duke 4y ago
  Writing high quality ergonomic API bindings is a surprising amount of work, especially in statically typed languages. Every API has its quirks, sometimes returns different data, has edge cases for certain calls, has different error reporting patterns, rate limiting, authentication methods, sometimes has intended or unintended breaking changes, .... Sure, you can usually just manually whip up the code for an endpoint or two in a few minutes , but then you need to continually add endpoins, fix the edge cases, adapt to upstream changes, ... Good bindings make your life a whole lot easier.
  • joshlemer 4y ago
    Correct. If we take their point to an extreme, HTTP calls are just bytes sent and received over TCP, so what's the use of an HTTP client library? Just open up a TCP connection and send/receive text to/from the server!