Appendix A. Types of web APIs and protocols
In this appendix, we study the API protocols we can use to implement application interfaces. Each of these protocols evolved to address specific problems in the integration between API consumers and producers. We discuss the benefits and the limitations of each protocol so that we can make the best choice when designing and building our own APIs. We will discuss the following protocols:
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RPC and its variants, JSON-RPC and XML-RPC
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SOAP
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gRPC
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REST
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GraphQL
Choosing the right type of API is fundamental for the performance and integration strategy of our microservices. The factors that will condition our choice of API protocol include these:
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Whether the API is public or private
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Type of API ...
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