Patterns for Moving from Static to Dynamic (Hypermedia, GraphQL) APIs

O'Reilly API Day 2023

Explores creating structure for the “sources” of information in a decoupled system—specifically, how traditional content structures like an Economist article, a Wikipedia page, or an HTML newsletter can transform to serve diverse and emergent consumers. As the internet becomes a hyperconnected, context-driven, ubiquitous information system, we outgrow static API end points retrieving HTML-structured (or JSON) content from a MySQL-backed piece of software. In a decoupled system, the information consumed is increasingly displayed in varying ways. Hypermedia APIs and/or GraphQL queries enable consumers to create divergent combinations of information from multiple information sources. These systems depend on well-structured information designed for dynamic flexibility. (Is that an oxymoron?) Redesigning information schemas for the modern world is all about designing relationships and, sometimes, using those relationships to define the storage structure behind the requests. Diana will use a straightforward example, borrowing patterns from real-world information systems at scale, to show how this schema transformation happens and why it is valuable.

Back to Events