Token Bucket vs Sliding Window: Choosing an API Rate Limiter
Compare token bucket, sliding window, fixed window and leaky bucket rate limiting: how each works, burst behaviour, memory cost and distributed pitfalls.
17 min read
Tag
api design
API Error Handling: Designing a Consistent, Versioned Error Contract
Treat API error handling as a public contract: HTTP status codes, stable error codes from a catalog, and RFC 9457 Problem Details bodies.
14 min read
REST API Pagination, Filtering and Sorting: One Contract
Learn why cursor pagination over a unique, indexed sort key beats offset pagination, and how to design filtering, sorting, cursors and limits as one contract.
14 min read
Backend for Frontend Pattern: When a BFF Beats a Shared API
Learn how the backend for frontend pattern works, how a BFF differs from an API gateway, how to implement aggregation safely, and when to skip it.
12 min read
gRPC Microservices: When Protobuf Beats JSON for Internal APIs
Learn how gRPC and protobuf work, when they beat JSON over REST for internal services, the operational trade-offs, and a framework for choosing between them.
14 min read
OpenAPI Contract First: Designing APIs Before Writing Code
Treat your OpenAPI description as a reviewed, versioned contract: design it first, generate types, and use CI and contract tests to stop drift.
15 min read
gRPC vs REST vs GraphQL: Choosing an API Style per Boundary
Pick gRPC, REST, or GraphQL per boundary, not per company: how each works, where each breaks, error models, and a checklist for internal vs public APIs.
13 min read
Backward Compatible API Changes: A Checklist for Service Owners
How to judge backward compatible API changes against real consumer behavior, classify breaking changes, apply tolerant readers, and run deprecation.
18 min read
Idempotency in Distributed Systems: Making Retries Safe
Learn how idempotency keys, durable dedup records and atomic state transitions make retries safe when exactly-once delivery is impossible.
14 min read
Shared API Contracts in a Monorepo: Share the Schema, Not DTOs
Learn to share API contracts across monorepo services using OpenAPI as the source of truth, generated types, and CI checks that catch breaking changes.
13 min read
GraphQL vs REST: Trade-offs for Real Backend Projects
Compare GraphQL vs REST on data modeling, over-fetching, caching, N+1, security and versioning, with a decision framework for backend teams.
13 min read
REST API Design: Resources, Status Codes and Consistency
Model resources as nouns, use HTTP methods and status codes per RFC 9110, and enforce conventions in CI so clients can predict every endpoint.
14 min read