Know About API-First, Cloud-Native Mobile App Development

What, where and why – many questions strike your mind while developing an app. However, here will be the answer when you see the combination of cloud-native app development with API-first development.

Embedding the concept of cloud-native technology in the modern app development arena by the top IT giants, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, is appreciable. They are among the leading cloud computing providers in the world.

A cloud-native application is basically built for the cloud. The designing and engineering of such applications is done keeping in mind the cloud-based infrastructure. Instead of building around the databases, in-house servers, connections etc, development of cloud-native applications depend upon the services that do not require much of hardware and maintenance. Hence, the developers can focus on the important issue – that actually matters – the product.

Such abstractions not just help a lot to keep the infrastructure and teams manageable, but also support cost reductions over the virtualized and standard bare-metal solutions. Obviously, less overhead leads to less risk possibility when you just have to deal with only fewer people and with fewer resources. However, cloud-native application development brings a lot of challenges with itself. Tying this entire ‘lightweight’ infrastructure is one of those challenges.

API-First

In the traditional process of application development, the product creation is done understanding that the code owns direct access to resources it needs. This becomes a monolithic, opinionated code base, decoupling of which is difficult. However, the cloud is much more than the job of running monolithic applications similar to this, it will find itself difficult to get advantage of the scalable, streamlined and distributed infrastructure.

Here is what API-First Development can bring a big change.

For those who are unfamiliar with the topic, API-first development process involves designing, documenting and building API of an application before anything else. This reflects that before running through the mobile application, Alexa skill, website or other things on internet, there should be the existence of API first. The foremost advantage of API-first development is that it not just isolates, but also unifies the logic of business away from the clients. In fact, it also establishes a single source of truth about the working of the product.

Building an API-first is important before other facets of the product are built to spec. API Blueprint helps a lot as the API documentation standards.

Making it Server-Less

In an instance, the cloud-native mobile app development and API-first development does not seem mutually exclusive. Without an API as well, a cloud native application can be built. Also, an API-first application can be build without the cloud. These two concepts harmonize perfectly together only is in the server-less environments.

Conclusion

Figuring out your what, where and why can be a part of your application development process, but not the how. Cloud native application development helps you to go with that ‘how’ using little much of overheads, whereas the API-first development provides you the tools to get answers for ‘where’ and ‘why’. This comprises the actual meaning of the API-first, cloud-native application development.