SupPlant Raised $27 Million, Agriculture APIs, REST vs GraphQL
This is issue 2022.11 of the API Changelog, a weekly mix of API news, commentary, and opinion. In this issue, you’ll get to know the most relevant API-related information from the week of March 14, 2022. Subscribe now, so you never miss an issue of the API Changelog.
Funding and M&A
SupPlant, an agricultural technology company, raised $27M. Red Dot Capital Partners led the investment, with participation from Smart Agro, Menomadin Foundation, and Maor Investments, among others.
Rutter, a commerce data API company, raised $27M in a Series A round. Andreessen Horowitz led the investment, with participation from Mischief Fund, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Comma Capital, among others.
Announcements
Cloudflare announced the release of Cloudflare API Gateway. The API Gateway can be broken down into security, management & monitoring, and everything else. The announcement goes through each of the categories in detail.
Google announced the preview of the exactly-once delivery feature of its Cloud Pub/Sub service. According to the announcement, the feature will “guarantee that no redelivery occurs once the message has been successfully acknowledged.” In essence, any subscription with the exactly-once delivery enabled won’t receive any duplicate deliveries.
API-first
Visualmodo published “Best API Architecture Practices Server or Client API Calls?” In this article, the author starts by exploring the notion of an API and then going into different types of architectures.
Nicole Hoefler wrote “REST API, GraphQL or SOAP — Which is the best?” In this piece, Nicole compares REST, GraphQL, and SOAP. The author explains how each API type works and what its advantages are.
Tyler Charboneau wrote “Comparing REST vs. GraphQL.” In this article, Tyler starts by exploring REST and GraphQL separately. The author then compares both approaches against efficiency, performance, usability, security, and hypermedia. According to Tyler, “The viability of REST and GraphQL will depend on your application use cases and goals.”
Management
MarTech Series published “Music APIs are the Key to the B2B Streaming Revolution.” The article shares how Feed Media Group offers B2B music services through their APIs. According to the author, “The music API is a win for rights holders and artists because it blows open the doors for new revenue streams.”
KillerStartups published “API Development: The Increasing Value of Agricultural Data.” In this piece, the author shares how APIs are driving innovation in agriculture. The article shares different types of APIs that can be used by agriculture to increase efficiency.
Practice
Rob Thomas wrote “Automate Your APIs With api-flow.” In this article, Rob explains why and how he built api-flow. The tool lets you run an API flow involving many steps in a headless fashion.
Elizabeth wrote “Dummy open-source: one command to test your API before it’s even built.” Elizabeth shares dummy, a tool that she built that lets you test your API. The author shares that dummy is a “tool that can help launch a mock server based on an API contract, which helps people see how the API will work before it’s even built.”
Shivam Verma wrote “Create a Simple API in Flask.” Shivam starts by explaining with Flask is and what it can and can’t do. In particular, the author shares that Flask “has no database abstraction layer, form validation, or other components where pre-existing third-party libraries provide common functions.” Then, the author proposes an API project and guides you into building it step by step.
Roberto Muñoz Huitrón wrote “Building a Python REST API : Getting started with FastAPI.” In this piece, Roberto covers FastAPI, compares it with Flask, and guides you into building an API. Some of FastAPI’s features that the author shares are that it’s performant, robust, and intuitive to use.
Ted Spence wrote “Should your API use enums?” In this article, Ted explains what enumerated values, or enums, are, and how you can use them in your API. According to Ted, “it’s okay to use an enum as an input parameter to an API request, but enums are dangerous on an output model.”
Security
L7 Defense published “70% of financial service providers are implementing API security.” The article goes through a recent survey where 70% of the respondents indicated that they’ve started the adoption of API security practices. According to L7 Defense, “large amounts of APIs are developed by different developers, different teams, for different purposes, which raises security control concerns.”
Help Net Security published “Cloudflare API Gateway increases security of devices and systems for enterprise customers.” This piece shows how the recently released Cloudflare API Gateway can help businesses with security-related activities. According to the authors, it is now “more critical than ever for businesses of all sizes to have robust protection and a clear view of their API suite.”
Help Net Security published “Attackers have come to love APIs as much as developers.” In this article, the author shares a report released by Cequence Security that reveals the growing use of APIs by attackers.
