API Architectural Styles

2025-01-10 347 words 2 minutes

Contents

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

A veteran, mature, and comprehensive protocol primarily based on XML.

Characteristics: Rigid, verbose, and strictly XML-based.
Best For: Financial services and payment gateways where high security and reliability are non-negotiable.
Drawbacks: Excessive complexity and overhead; unsuitable for lightweight mobile apps or quick prototypes.

The most popular style, acting as the “internet backbone” for most web applications.

Characteristics: Built on standard HTTP methods; easy to implement, cacheable, and highly scalable.
Best For: Standard web services, social media platforms (Twitter), and video sites (YouTube).
Drawbacks: Can be inefficient for highly connected data models or real-time requirements due to fixed data structures.

A query language and architectural style developed by Facebook to solve data-fetching inefficiencies.

Characteristics: Clients request specifically what they need, eliminating over-fetching (getting too much data) or under-fetching (getting too little).
Best For: Applications with complex, nested data requirements (e.g., GitHub, Shopify).
Drawbacks: Presents a steep learning curve and requires more intensive server-side processing for flexible queries.

A modern, high-performance framework using Protocol Buffers (protobuf) by default.

Characteristics: Uses binary serialization for low latency and high efficiency.
Best For: Inter-service communication within internal microservices architectures (e.g., Netflix).
Drawbacks: Limited native browser support makes direct client-side (frontend) integration challenging.

Focuses on persistent, low-latency, and bi-directional communication.

Characteristics: Unlike HTTP, it maintains a constant connection between client and server.
Best For: Real-time applications like live chat, financial tickers, and multiplayer gaming.
Drawbacks: Significant overhead if real-time, bi-directional communication is not a functional requirement.

An event-driven architectural style using HTTP callbacks.

Characteristics: Asynchronous communication where the server “pushes” data to the client when a specific event occurs.
Best For: Real-time notifications for external systems (e.g., GitHub commits, Stripe payment confirmations).
Drawbacks: Not suitable for synchronous communication or scenarios requiring immediate client-side responses.

Style	Data Format	Communication	Latency	Complexity
SOAP	XML	Synchronous	Moderate	High
REST	JSON/XML	Synchronous	Moderate	Low
GraphQL	JSON	Synchronous	Moderate	Moderate
gRPC	Protobuf	Sync/Async	Low	Moderate
WebSocket	Binary/Text	Bi-directional	Very Low	Moderate
Webhooks	JSON/XML	Asynchronous	N/A	Low

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