Recently , I have experienced a problem related to an API for my team ,I wanted to share it here .It was an API related to order processing when user buy the product it will be called to process order details .
During development, we overlooked key aspects of the API development. The client prioritized speed, so the team rushed into development, conducting only a few tests using Postman before deploying it to production.
At first, things seemed smooth—until the first wave of issues hit the Order API and team received large number of production incidents.
The common issues were,
- Developers struggled with inconsistent naming conventions.
- Endpoints were difficult to understand.
- Authentication was all over the place, with some APIs using API keys and others relying on JWT, and a few with no security at all.
- As external partners integrated with the API, they encountered cryptic error messages, leaving them frustrated and filing countless production support tickets.
- Debugging andtroubleshooting took longe time as code scattered all across the .NET core libraries.
The Turning Point
Recognizing the growing chaos, I scheduled a team meeting to brainstorm and develop the strategic plan for the team. After long discussion, the team identified the top ten most pressing challenges in their API design and tackled them one by one.
proposed Solution
- Breaking Changes Disaster: Team implemented versioning (/v2), ensuring backward compatibility to prevent partner disruptions. The API versioning best practices was reviewed by team of architects.
- Authentication Complexity: Standardizing on OAuth 2.0 brought security and simplicity.
- Database Bottlenecks: Query optimizations and caching mechanisms significantly improved performance. Team optimized the query and reviewed the query execution plan as repeated activity for 2 sprints to improve database bottlenecks. Team added alerting when database performance was slow.
- Error Handling Confusion: A clear, standardized error format helped developers troubleshoot issues quickly. Team reviewed each log, added the error logs into application insight which gave lot of insight.
- Security Risks: Regular security audits and input validation eliminated vulnerabilities. They integrated the security scan in the build pipeline and the report was sent to all stakeholders on every week. This gave visibility of scan report and how team is acting very quickly on it.
- API Overload: Rate limiting and throttling mechanisms safeguarded the system from excessive traffic.
- Documentation Gaps: Comprehensive API documentation reduced support queries. Team put together the API details, sample request/response format in Swagger API which made downstream team’s understanding easy on the API.
- Scalability Woes: Team implemented autoscaling which ensured peak load handling.
- Redundant Calls: Team added GraphQL and batch processing which minimized unnecessary API calls.
- Slow Payload Processing: Team added Pagination, compression, and async processing which improved efficiency.
After the Code Change - The API performed better
With these improvements, the OrderAPI transformed to a high scale API . External developers praised its usability, partners integrated seamlessly, and the team’s workload decreased due to fewer support issues.
Team knew that sustaining this success required discipline. They established API design standards, adopted an API-first approach, and implemented rigorous code reviews to prevent similar issues in the future.
The team thrived, setting an industry benchmark for API design.
Moral of the Story: Don't commit to deliver quicker , deliver with quality . Quality makes the client happy always .
Thank you for reading!
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