From the course: Designing RESTful APIs

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Approaches to adding an API

Approaches to adding an API - REST Tutorial

From the course: Designing RESTful APIs

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Approaches to adding an API

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- [Instructor] There are three approaches that allow you to add an API to your system. Some are easier than others. First, we have the bolt-on strategy. This is when you have an existing application and add an API after the fact. This is often considered a brute-force approach, but is the fastest way to get value from the API since the underlying system is functional the whole time. This takes advantage of existing code and systems so you don't have to re-figure out anything. Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks. Poor architectural decisions and bad name decisions made years ago tend to seep through the system and cause problems in external interfaces with helper libraries and all the supporting client code in every single piece. As a result, these oddities never go away. Next, we have the other extreme, the Greenfield strategy. This is when there's no underlying application or even necessarily business logic that you…

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