API Design
4 engineering logs on API Design. Newest first.
- Idempotency keys: the API contract that makes retries safe
Why a timeout tells the client nothing about whether the write happened, why storing the key after the work is a race rather than a fix, and why the stored response has to be replayed rather than recomputed.
- Pagination at Scale: Why OFFSET and SKIP Will Eventually Break Your API
Why OFFSET/SKIP pagination degrades linearly with depth, how cursor-based pagination keeps latency flat, and when to switch before production bites back.
- Designing Resilient APIs: Failure-Handling Patterns for Distributed Systems
Practical resilience patterns for distributed APIs: fail-fast, retries with backoff, circuit breakers, bulkheads, fallbacks, rate limiting, failover, and observability.
- Transitioning from REST to gRPC: System Design and Tradeoffs
How gRPC changes API design versus REST: protocol model, protobuf schemas, service interfaces, streaming patterns, and when gRPC or REST is the right architectural choice.