Introduction
The most significant difference between REST APIs and event-driven APIs is that you don’t have to use an event-driven API to build a webhook. You can add more complexity to your app without publishing it as an event-driven API. You also don’t need to define events or trigger them manually: they’re automatically fired by the platform when specific actions are performed (such as sending emails).
Event-driven APIs can be used to replace REST APIs
Event-driven APIs are more flexible and scalable than REST APIs. They can be used to replace REST APIs, but they are also suitable for other kinds of applications.
Event-driven APIs use events as the primary way to communicate with the application server. The client sends an event when it wants something done on the server (for example, a new file has been uploaded) and then waits for feedback from the server about whether what it asked for was successful or not (for example, if there were any errors during upload).
Event-driven APIs don’t usually have a lot of docs or pre-existing libraries, making it harder to get started
If you’re just starting with event-driven APIs, it’s essential to know that they are typically still in the early stages of development. As such, they’re not well-documented or supported by pre-existing libraries like REST APIs. While this makes them more challenging to start, it also makes them simpler to build and use.
In addition, event-driven APIs are often built by various people with different skill sets and motivations (e.g., hobbyists vs. professional developers). These people may be working on their side projects or building tools for their company’s internal needs, but regardless of the reason for writing an event-driven API—they all have one thing in common: they want it to meet specific use cases for their users/customers.
Webhooks are a type of event-driven API
Webhooks are a type of event-driven API. As such, they’re a way to notify users when something happens in your application so that they can take appropriate action.
Webhooks are also an integral part of building conversational interfaces and interactive experiences.
Event-driven APIs use webhooks to fire events in response to specific actions.
Webhooks are an event-driven API in which specific actions trigger the webhook to fire an event. Webhooks can be used for many things, but they’re most often used to build chatbots. A webhook is just a URL that you give to the person or bot that you want to receive your data; when something happens on your end, you send data to this URL, and it’s delivered as an HTTP callback by the service provider (in this case, Slack).
Event-driven APIs define a set of events and what triggers them.
An event-driven API defines a set of events and what triggers them. The trigger can be an action taken by a user, like signing up for an account or placing an order. These events are sent to a webhook, typically hosted on the same domain as the application. When this happens, it’s called integrations or triggers, and these can send data to multiple webhooks or only one.
When you create an event-driven API, you’ll need to decide whether your system will have multiple triggers (webhooks), what actions should send data there, and who can access those triggers (authentication).
You can create webhooks without publishing an event-driven API, but you won’t be able to notify people about it or solicit feedback.
You can create webhooks without publishing an event-driven API, but you won’t be able to notify people about it or solicit feedback. You can also use webhooks with REST APIs, which I’ll cover in this post.
Webhooks are a type of event-driven API—they’re triggered by specific events and send data back to the user. They’re typically used to replace REST APIs because they offer more flexibility than traditional RESTful endpoints: you can publish events whenever something happens on your site that needs immediate attention (such as a new customer order being placed), rather than waiting for someone else’s schedule to allow them time off from work for them to update their website.
You can use both REST and event-driven APIs in the same app.
You can use both REST and event-driven APIs in the same app. An excellent example is a Google Analytics app that tracks page views and user actions. You might have a table that contains all your site’s events, which you then periodically query for data about what your users are doing. Another good example is vatcheckapi.com, it provides a REST-Endpoint for real-time validations, but provides a webhook logic, that notifies users about finished API Batches.
With this approach, you can use the REST API to get the latest events from Analytics, store them in your database, then periodically pull them out and process them according to business logic.
If you want to build an event-driven API, your documentation must be clear, consistent and easy to find
If you want to build an event-driven API, your documentation must be clear, consistent, and easy to find.
If you’re new to the world of building APIs, this might sound like a no-brainer — but we’ve all seen some pretty lousy documentation. This is one of the most common mistakes developers make when writing about their APIs: They get carried away with how technical they can make things sound or assume everyone will be familiar with the terms they use in their documentation.
The truth is that if your goal is for people who aren’t well-versed in machine learning or data science (or whatever topic your API covers) to use it effectively, then you need clear documentation that explains exactly what each feature does and how someone would use it. Any jargon or technical language should be explained whenever possible, so users don’t need computer science concepts experience before successfully using your product!
Conclusion
In conclusion, event-driven APIs are a great way to build a more scalable and secure API than REST. They also allow you to think about the data flows in your application differently.