3 min read
Automation Trends: Top APIs to use in 2023
An application programming interface is all around us and will be even more in the trend of automation in 2023. They are used to access data that...
Hey there 👋,
I hope you are doing well in these complicated times.
I’ll try to cheer you up and, maybe, inspire you with this project which is the most ambitious one I’ve started as a side project eight years ago and is now a tech startup with a team of 10 people.
Let’s talk about APIs, JavaScript, and a platform to bind them all: Meta API.
Meta API is a platform for developers to integrate and automate APIs in the cloud.
It can make you think of a Zapier or a Make (ex-Integromat) for developers, but with major differences:
Our goal is also to cover the whole dev cycle, including testing, deployment and monitoring.
Everything started eight years ago when I wanted to go on a weekend trip. I’ve lost all my weekend planning this trip (so, no trip) and I was so frustrated about the work required: open hundreds of browser tabs, comparing possibilities between Booking, Airbnb, train lines, flights, etc… to find a “great match” satisfying both travel, accommodations, and budget.
As an engineer and a web developer, I thought that there is a much more optimized way to solve this kind of problem with an algorithm. So I started to write some code and, the golden way to retrieve all the data is through an API.
After thousands of hours of work, coding, refactoring and abstraction, we came (with my co-founder) with this idea of a platform to connect everything, write easily your own algorithm and deploy it to be accessible. Due to the Covid crisis, we dropped the original idea to plan trips and holidays to pivot and focus on B2B needs.
This experience make me believe that Web APIs are one of the most fundamental pillars of the Internet and assuring universal interoperability of all APIs will change the Web forever, switching from closed and competitive ecosystems to a collaborative universe of specialized tools and services. That our final goal: creating a protocol or a new open technology to make all APIs interoperable.
The first design part was to ensure any APIs can be plugged inside the platform, in no time and with less possible friction. The OpenAPI became quickly evidence: it’s used by a vast majority of projects and it’s allowed to describe any API. That’s our entry point.
The second part was the algorithm: how can we allow our user (and us) to write the algorithm they want, without restriction? Providing a code editor and an engine to run this code safely and isolated was our solution.
Now, with these two major concept, we built a whole interface and automate a lot of work to make it more pleasant and efficient than doing it in your own code editor or servers. We introduce auto-deployment on serverless (for performance and scalability), automatic monitoring, versioning, parallel environment for staging and production, etc…
Step by step, feature by feature, we are making our platform easier to use and more accessible.
The central part of the platform is the Spell where APIs will meet your code.
A Spell example where Stripe’s invoices are pushed to a Google Spreadsheet
The main part is a code editor, where you can write Javascript and Typescript code and use NPM dependencies.
On the left, you can manage your connectors, which are API’s endpoint to retrieve and send actions to the target API.
Each connector has its own configuration panel (on the right) to set up authentication, parameters, etc.
The link between your code and the connectors are done by a snippet of code, looking like this:
We automate a lot of boring stuff related to connectors with this snippet and our backend : authentication format (especially OAuth), formatting values, ensuring valid types, etc.
When you hit Run, everything is compiled on our backend, pushed into a dedicated development server (run at the fly on a Docker container) and executed.
We can see the response and all console.log
done inside the code.
Example of a Spell run
You can check the data, fix errors, run again, and so on.
It’s fast and almost feel like your local dev environment.
When your Spell is ready, you can check the changes and deploy it.
A spell, ready to be deployed
We’ll deploy your code inside a Serverless function and give you a unique URL to trigger the Spell like you want:
Your Spell will become an API of API (so a Meta API 😉)
Once deployed, every request are monitored by our backend, ensuring the code is well executed each time.
We only collect requests metadata and the data you choose to log. Everything is happening in streaming and destroyed after the run.
Seeing some successful requests on my freshly released Spell
If an error happen, a notification is automatically sent to you.
If you have read the How does it work? part and are a coder, you have figured out that Meta API can solve a lot of **** developer’s problems.
But to be more practical, here are the two main usage of our users.
Many of our users want to automate their daily workflows or business processes. From generating invoices to ease their CI/CD workload, any service can be automated.
The best part of this kind of workload is the running done on the cloud, without the need to involve your own servers. You won't have to worry about servers, maintenance, and security.
As a startup, we are our first platform users because we need so much to create this kind of automated process without bloating our code.
Here are some examples of real usage for us:
If you are working on a SaaS platform, you probably already have considered integration with others tools: messaging, payments, CRM, project management tools… Besides creating new features, these integrations will lower your churn and increase your users’ adoption.
Integration implies a data exchange between your platform and a third-party service, with mostly a storage of data in your side.
You can create a unified API, easy to use inside your code and letting all the hard stuff being processed outside.
Here are some real use cases:
We want to push the dev experience even further. Here is a sneak peek of the features we are working on:
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you have found some inspiring thought inside.
I’m eager to have your feedback about our approach and the concept of this platform, either shared opinions or criticisms. You can try the platform and create a free account.
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