Developing APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) have evolved through the years as the world transitions from desktop applications to web apps that are conveniently accessible online. Roy Fieldings’ dissertation – Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures in 2000 paved the way for the modern APIs that we enjoy today. Since then, various companies such as Salesforce and Amazon followed suit and the rest is history.
There are different types of APIs from SOAP, to REST to GraphQL to WebSockets to gRPC and to yet-another-API technology that will be unveiled in the future. Microsoft originally designed the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) which uses the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) that lets you define and store data in a shareable manner. On the other hand, REST (REpresentational State Transfer) is a technology that’s generally preferred over other similar API types which uses less bandwidth which makes it more suitable for efficient public Internet usage. GraphQL is basically a query language for web APIs which also acts as a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing dataset and WebSockets provides a two-way interactive communication session between the user’s browser and a server.
In this article, I’ll share the steps on how to create a Real-Time API in AWS AppSync that leverages WebSocket technology. Let’s get started!