August 2020 - Galaxy Weblinks

How OpenAPI and Swagger helps in developing RESTful APIs?

Posted on August 31, 2020October 10, 2024 by galaxy-admin

We are all aware of how APIs connect different devices and applications and allow us to place an order, book a flight, or make a reservation.

Since software products are becoming more and more about a bunch of micro-services and third-party APIs mashed together, it is critical to get their structure in order. Plus, as the number of APIs continues to rise, the lack of global API standard risks slowing down innovation and limiting collaboration.

That’s where specification comes in the picture.

An API specification is a document that describes an API.

It is stored in a machine-readable form such as JSON or a YAML file and can be converted to human-readable API documentation.

What is Swagger and OpenAPI Specification?

Swagger is a tool for designing, building, documenting, and mocking APIs. It uses the OpenAPI Specification (also known as OAS) to describe requests, responses, and any other details about your RESTful APIs.

(RESTful APIs enable web applications that are built on various programming languages to communicate with each other.)

Swagger and OpenAPI specification lets developers design and develop REST APIs seamlessly and effortlessly. These specifications help in describing the structure of a REST API so that machines can read and mock them.

For instance, to access a REST service, the client needs to know the REST API of that particular service. You would also need to write the code according to that documentation.

With OpenAPI, this step is automated.

There exists a machine parse-able file that explains to computers how a REST API works. It tells code what replies to expect and what requests exist. To quote from the OpenAPI description:

“The OpenAPI Specification (OAS) defines a standard, language-agnostic interface to RESTful APIs. This can be used by documentation generation tools to display the API, code generation tools to generate servers and clients in various programming languages, testing tools, and many other use cases.”

. . .

Developing APIs with Swagger and OpenAPI

The Swagger toolset includes a mix of open source, free, and commercial tools, which can be used at different stages of the API lifecycle while using OpenAPI spec.

These tools include:

Swagger Inspector: API testing tool that generates OpenAPI definitions from an existing API and lets you validate your APIs.
SwaggerHub: API design and documentation, built for teams working with OpenAPI.
Swagger Editor: Swagger Editor lets you preview documents in real-time, and edit OpenAPI specifications in YAML inside your browser.
Swagger UI: Swagger UI is a collection of CSS, Javascript and HTML, and assets that dynamically generate beautiful documentation from an OAS-compliant API.

And others…..

For instance,

Writing your first specification?
You can use editor.swagger.io which loads petstore samples.

The left side shows OpenAPI specification and the right side shows OpenAPI documentation which is generated based on spec. Initially, developers used to create documentation from the code.

Adding a step of specification while creating an API helps in sharing it with different teams who are going to work on these APIs or use these APIs in their application. That’s when the design and documentation of APIs come in handy.

So if you have an OpenAPI implementation and an OpenAPI description file of a REST API, you can feed that description file to the OpenAPI implementation.

And this implementation now knows how to use the REST API, it can even auto generate code to use the REST API in different languages or can generate human readable documentation for you.

. . .

Why OpenAPI Spec for developers?

As shown above, many developers find it valuable to work with a specification to automatically generate and improve their documentation, as this improves consistency and saves time.

Also, it enhances the developer experience as it makes it easier to try out and explore an API. As it helps other developers to consume your API, and having a well defined/documented API will have a great impact on it. You can focus on the API consumers need beforehand.

Secondly, it enables independence between teams, e.g, QA, Backend, and Frontend engineers know how the API is supposed to do, so they are all aligned on it.

Removing these dependencies speeds up the release process because different teams can do their tasks at a much faster pace.

Conclusion:

The OpenAPI Initiative is part of the Linux Foundation, which makes it a bit more trustworthy and at least looks like it won’t go away soon.

Whereas, Swagger tools are convenient because you can manage files in the repository and send it out as specifications with one command.

Whatever your approach to building APIs, we can help you in having a trusted and consumer friendly tool to orchestrate your API lifecycle, which can be a crucial game changer in your application development.

CPaaS and UCaaS | What is the difference?

Posted on August 27, 2020October 10, 2024 by galaxy-admin

The current times have brought with them a paradigm shift in the way we communicate and conduct our business. Companies are starting to migrate from on-premise to cloud-based communication technologies. The question remains, as with other technologies; what and how to build an effective communication stack?

The choices:

An allrounder off the shelf communication solution such as UCaaS.

CPaaS for building new and highly specific functionality into existing technology.

UCaaS or Unified Communications as a Service comes neatly packed under a single ready-to-use toolkit. Via UCaaS, business owners like you can select the desired tools and features suited for your business model.

These can include messaging services, voice and/or video calling, setting the lower and upper limit of attendees, etc.

CPaaS or Communications Platforms as a Service takes a different approach here. CPaaS offers flexibility to business owners via handing them the Software Development Kits and the required communications APIs, which they can build upon or configure with their existing business model.

From this point onwards, it’s on the inhouse development team to build their own real-time communications platforms for being in touch with their stakeholders around the globe. CPaaS gives the option to start from level 1 instead of scratch in case you opt for it.

I would like to point out here that UCaaS comes in the category of SaaS whereas CPaaS comes under PaaS. They both have some shared features and some distinct set of benefits. Let’s focus on the similarities first which will then be followed by the differences.

Shared Benefits of CPaaS and UCaaS

Now that we have introduced both the platforms, let’s look at some of the legit commonalities that the two share:

Variety of Customization options

Both are cloud delivery models and can be highly customized based on business requirements. You may opt for audio calls only, add extra security layers for internal and external communications, set up passcodes for meetings, etc.

Cost Efficient Solutions

You don’t have to pay for the features that you know are of no use to you. Perhaps you are looking for a solution for a small team of 15-20 members. You don’t have to shell out extra dollars for a higher number of attendees if that is not your current need.

Easy Scalable Models

All cloud based models come with great flexibility, UCaaS and CPaaS are no exceptions. You can scale up or down as per your requirements. You can configure chatbots, team messaging and collaboration options, embedded communications, etc all on the cloud which can eliminate the need for internal infrastructure and its maintenance.

Enhanced Connectivity

Since both these models are cloud based, they can connect your teammates anywhere anytime and with any device. This ensures that devices, geographic proximity, and even network bandwidths are not an issue for smooth collaboration.

So, how do these two differ?

Well, to begin with, UCaaS represents the plug and play model whereas CPaaS requires custom development before you can reap its benefits.

The UCaaS model offers two options namely Single-Tenancy model and Multiple-Tenancy model. In the Single-Tenancy model, every customer can customize the solution as per their needs. And in the Multiple-Tenancy model, multiple customers use the same software making this model a little less reliable.

The CPaaS leaves the development and deployment to the clients and lets them work with the SDKs and APIs as per their needs. Clients can add features according to their requirements.

Another point here is that UCaaS does not necessitate skilled and experienced developers whereas if you are to work with APIs and SDKs, this is a default requirement.

UCaaS completely focuses on leveraging cloud infrastructure. CPaaS can be used as an extra layer of features to complement the on-premise systems.

So what’s the ideal scenario for using these technologies?

Experts believe that these technologies can be used complementary to each other. When your business needs are highly customizable, you can opt for CPaaS, but you need to have the expertise to customize it. CPaaS also lets you secure your communications in your way. You also have the option of integrating AI and ML into your products.

For more generic communication (mainly external ones) with stakeholders where the plug and play option suffices, you can go for UCaaS. It is more time saving and you need not hire highly skilled developers for its implementation.

So here is a summarized version that you can present to your team for making the right decision.

UCaaS and CPaaS are certainly not the different sides of a coin, rather they both have their respective places in the industry. In case you are looking for further clarity on these said models or wish to opt for one, we can help you with it. Feel free to contact us here.

How a developer can shine as an effective team player?

Posted on August 25, 2020October 10, 2024 by galaxy-admin

Unless you’re the only developer on your team, you must be spending a lot of time in technical discussions or communicating about design docs, and code reviews with other developers and non-developers.

No matter how great your technical skills are, they alone just wouldn’t cut it! To develop winning software, you have to be an effective team player.

It’s not always easy to work and collaborate efficiently with people in your team. People have different temperaments and varied perspectives, opinions, or experiences. However, it takes empathy, maturity, and acceptance, along with superior technical skills and a winning attitude to be a value-add to your team.

Read our blog to know how you can be the best team player.

Here is how you can shine on as an effective team player that everyone would look up to – whether you are coding in a physical office or remote work environment.

Appreciate suggestions and feedback

Research indicates that the ideal ratio of criticism to positive comments should ideally be 1:5.

You must try to build a rapport and trust within your team. This would ensure that any suggestions made you would be taken in the right spirit and not as blatant criticism. Offering genuine praise along with constructive feedback will help you make inroads within the team.

Is your teammate killing it with the feature they’re working on?
Did they square away some part of the codebase as part of their peer review that they didn’t have to?
Did they slog through your 800-line code review with you?

Tell them you appreciate it!

Whereas, while receiving the feedback or criticism, avoid triggering a fight-or-flight reaction by asking, “How could we achieve a mutually desirable outcome?”

In its Aristotle Project, Google explains the first team effectiveness pillar, psychological safety as:

Within team members, it matters that they should feel safe in terms of offering a new idea, seeking clarification, asking a question, or admitting a mistake or weakness.

Such behavior helps you and your team members build the ability to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.

Anticipate your coworkers’ questions

At some point in time, you’ve all had to commit code that you’re not proud of or must have thrown problems over the wall to QA.

If you are asked to read your own after a few months, you may find several flaws in it. Perhaps working with a rough API or an impending deadline made you do some questionable things.

That’s a habit of making excuses which may lead you to a series of questions while code review from QA and other senior or junior developers, like —

“Does this code comply with client specified coding standards?”
“How does the system behave in this particular scenario? Will failure be logged for this particular scenario?”

You can anticipate other’s questions. For this, you need to be in their ‘proverbial shoes’ to understand the other person’s perspective and then asking yourself the questions beforehand like –

“What would be the stage where my code may not work?”
“Should I be reviewing pull requests?”

“Coding is a form of communication. Communication is rooted in empathy. So software engineers have a lot to gain from leveraging empathy as tactical skill.” — Andrea Goulet

As a good team player, the responsibility of basic level bug checking rather than passing chaos. Be proactive in documenting the sacrifices in code quality you’ve had to make, and why. Leave comments with answers to questions that you know your reviewers will have.

So, we can say that proper documentation with high-quality/maintainable code is a by-product of being an empathetic developer.

Be the go-to person for ‘that’ topic

Whether teaching yourself a new framework, availing an online course, or reading over an answer on Stack Overflow, your brain is consuming knowledge nonstop.

You constantly try to become an expert in your field, and if you’re really good, then through sharing it, you can become the go-to person for other developers.

“In today’s environment, hoarding knowledge ultimately erodes your power. If you know something very important, the way to get power is by actually sharing it.” — Joseph Badaracco

Exchange more creative ways to add to a project, be it through pull-request reviews, project management, facilitating discussions about GitHub issues, documentation, design, or code walk-throughs for other contributors.

The same opportunities can be offered to remote developers.

In fact, to make the most out of remote working, you can give them the updates on virtual developer conferences, write tech blogs, or split the costs of technical workshops or webinars, depending on common career paths you and your team members want to take.

You can also create a community or group to do remote mentoring sessions together in place of in-person mentoring. Encourage conversations and creative thinking to become a much more valuable team member.

One of the recent examples we’ve seen around knowledge sharing is where developers, UX designers, and product owners came together to vote on the topics they wanted most to discuss around frontend development — Enjoying their hot beverage at the same time!

Take a humble approach to other’s bad code

Developer’s work on another developer’s code – this is done all the time in every organization. Either mostly working on legacy code or as a peer review.

Most of us are guilty of writing it ourselves from time to time. How do you flag that up when the bad code was written by your teammate or your senior?

The issue with code, in general, is that there are multiple ways to write it. There isn’t a right or wrong way to do it. So, evaluate what is wrong in the code before you approach your colleague.

You’ll be building a supportive work environment by giving reasons and opening the discussion, instead of just expecting the developer to follow your word blindly.

Ask for their opinion on their code by asking questions in the most possible humble manner.

Would it be better to structure the code like this?
I don’t understand this section of code, could you explain it to me?

Incorporate all the code review best practices that offers a great opportunity to suggest fixes or changes.

Best team players treat fellow team members with courtesy and consideration – without needing a push.

If you create such a sense of support for your own team starting now, you can expect to see more learning and development opportunities, and better performance for you and as a team as well.

Why you should partner with a development agency?

Posted on August 18, 2020October 10, 2024 by galaxy-admin

As a creative agency, it is imperative for you that your product is developed exactly as you envisioned without countless iterations and unreasonable overheads. That is where a professional development agency or digital production experts come into the picture.

Here are some compelling reasons for a creative agency to hire a software development partner.

Saves Your Time

Unless you’re an expert in web and mobile development, the development process can turn out to be a massive undertaking. Website development has numerous dynamic aspects, such as search optimization and changes in user behavior. Now factor in how much you’d have to learn to get up to the speed! It may not leave you with ample time to focus on running your business.

Take your web design and development concerns off of your plate and utilize that time to make way for new ideas by hiring a development agency.

Flexibility Of Engagement

Lack of control on your project direction, timelines, and outcomes is frustrating. That’s why agencies have engagement models to quantify expectations and deliveries.

Engagement models help you get your scope, budget, deliverables, management, time-to-market, and deadlines right.

Popular engagement models that agencies go for:

Fixed price: Ideal for projects with well-defined expectations in terms of the project outcomes and timeline.
Or
Time and Material: Ideal for a long term project with dynamic requirements and uncertain deadlines.

Having determined the type of business relationship via engagement models you can be confident about your product timelines and have measurable parameters for the tasks accomplished.

Helps You Beat The Competition

To succeed, you need to outdo your competitors. It’s as simple as that! Or stay up to speed at the very least. Hiring a web development agency will help you catch up with the competition in this highly dynamic and competitive marketplace.

It helps a great deal to have specialists at your disposal, who are willing to give immediate turnarounds round the clock.

Web and Mobile development companies are well-versed in their craft and use proven methodologies and processes. They know what your users are looking for and will ensure that the product they build complements your vision.

No Management Hassles

A web development agency provides end-to-end development solutions. This would include product strategy, and customer journey mapping. They don’t just write code but take complete accountability up to go-to-market.

Things that a development agency takes care of besides design and code:

Business analysts gather project requirements, analyze them, make recommendations, prepare a technical document and estimate the scope of work.
Your development partner then schedules meetings to ensure that everyone is on the same page during the development cycle.
Also, a dedicated project manager is assigned to take care of everything from client communication to meeting the deadlines.

Helps You Stay On Top Of The Disruptions

When you’re hiring a development agency, you’re getting the diverse expertise of trained professionals. You get a pool of designers, developers, managers, QA experts who have mastered the art of collaboration amongst themselves over the years. There is almost always a skilled expert ready to sort out a given issue at any time.

Some of these agencies specialize in hottest trends in the industry, such as IoT, AI, AR/VR, and Blockchain. They understand your needs are well versed with the latest technologies and can recommend a solution that suits your project to a T.

Provides Turnkey Solution

Your business is not made of lines of code. There are other aspects of a business that needs to be taken care of. Marketing, sales, support team, and a good infrastructure that will become your core business point.
Partnering with a development agency will provide you a turnkey solution that comes with a holistic package which you need to run your business.

Everything in the development pipeline. The agency will provide everything from hosting, planning, UI/UX, SSL certificates, branding, design, development, user testing, SEO, maintenance, and support.

Our observations are for the companies who are looking to scale and need immediate turnaround without a prolonged latency and much of SME involvement to go in the little details.

The agencies that have partnered with us, speak very highly of us. You can go look us up on Clutch. And if you’re convinced that we are a good fit for you too, chat with us here.

What is Node.js and other things you should know about it?

Posted on August 11, 2020October 10, 2024 by galaxy-admin

Whether you have recently started learning Node.js or thinking about using it in your next project, this blog will help you in understanding the main reasons why it has become so popular, and the use cases of Node.js that you can implement for better opportunities.

Node.js is an open source, cross platform Javascript run-time environment for running web applications outside the client’s browser.

That fits in a basic scenario while creating a web application, like this —

The usage of Node.js is not only limited to building web applications, but also for implementing various kinds of services.

Microservices
Developing API
Backends and servers
Scripting and automation
Frontends

The ethos of Node.js is that it uses an asynchronous, event-driven, and non-blocking I/O model. This creates lightweight and efficient real-time applications that run across distributed devices – perfect for data intensive applications.

I know you didn’t come here after escaping the never-ending research loop only to get stuck again with event-driven, asynchronous, and other jargon.

Let’s get to the basics to understand how these terms are solving age old problems — and also are the main reason why Node.js is heavily used among programmers and companies today.

Here’s where Node.js shines

Single Threading

Traditional web-serving techniques use each connection (request) to spawn a new thread (the time and resources to execute a small unit of instructions). This takes up system RAM and eventually maxing-out at the amount of RAM available.

Whereas, Node.js environment is carried out by one computer processing thread that runs through a queue of events.

That’s because Node.js is single threaded that executes each event one by one in that queue. And you also don’t have to start a new thread for every new user and make them wait.

Non-blocking I/O model

Image credit: Luminousmen.com

I/O refers to input/output. It can be anything ranging from making an HTTP request to an API, to reading/writing local files.

I/O takes time and hence blocks other functions.

Node.js is non-blocking I/O, which means:

The server will keep attending requests.
The main thread will not be blocked in I/O operations.

You can initiate the requests of 2 users in parallel without waiting for the response to the request for the first user. This non-blocking I/O eliminates the need for multi-threading since the server can handle multiple requests at the same time- making the whole process fast and scalable.

Asynchronous request handling

An app database can be crashed with a huge data load.

Receiving a high amount of concurrent data can make the database congested and result in the crash of the application. Also, it becomes expensive to queue data and maintains concurrency because of the huge data load.

The asynchronous nature of Node.js helps in handling huge data load.

Asynchronous processing allows requests to be processed without blocking the thread. This helps Node.js make the most of single threading, resulting in short response time.

Due to its single-threaded, non-blocking, asynchronous nature, Node.js is a popular choice for video conferences, chats, online gaming, or any solution that requires constantly updated data.

And that’s what leads to our next section of existing use cases of Node.js.

Popular use case opportunities in Node.js

Node.js stands out for its speed, intensive data exchange, application scalability, etc. and that is why it has been used by NASA, Netflix, Paypal and other companies.

Below are the examples of when Node.js can and should be used:

1. Chats/Chatbots:

The chat application is a popular example of Node.js. It helps in creating a data-intensive (but low processing/computation), high traffic, lightweight application that runs across distributed devices.

2. Microservices:

When building and deploying microservices solutions, Node.js is the technology of choice. Companies are using two frameworks for microservice architecture. The restify is used by npm and Netflix, while the Express framework lists Uber and IBM among its users.

Whereas, Walmart’s shift to microservices architecture with Node.js resulted in saving up to 40% on hardware and 20-50% on overall operations.

3. Data streaming

Netflix chose Node.js for application scalability and intensive data exchange.

Node.js helps in processing files while they’re still being uploaded, as the data comes in through a stream and we can process it in an online fashion. This could be done for real-time video or audio encoding and proxying between different data sources.

4. Real time data

There is a need to plan out extra resources to execute all the operations without failing to meet any service-level agreements if your web app is running live 24 x 7.

Node.js is a good fit for building real-time web apps by using push technology over web sockets (a two-way communication between the clients and servers).

Some applications function within a time frame that the users recognize as current and immediate. For example, collaborative web apps (Trello, Google Docs), live chat, instant messaging, and online gaming are real-time apps that benefit from Node.js architecture.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, if your use case does not access any blocking resources nor contain CPU intensive operations, you can exploit the benefits of Node.js and enjoy scalable and fast network applications.

If you want to enter into the real-time web or create a data intensive application with Node.js, Contact us.

5 Useful Tips For UX Designers

Posted on August 5, 2020October 10, 2024 by galaxy-admin

How often does it happen that we put in days and weeks in designing the perfect UI design thinking that it will be a user delight.

But when the first analysis comes in, the numbers paint a different and a rather disappointing picture.

Every UX Designer under the sun has gone through this situation. Sometimes an overabundance of creativity can make us overlook the default practices.

In one of our previous blogs, we talked about the layout fundamentals that will ensure an attractive UI design. Taking that thread ahead, this article would highlight the UI tips and tricks which will work in improving your overall design.

Recognition Over Recall

In Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics, he recommended recognition over recall.

For instance, it is much easier to recognize the skeuomorphic shopping cart icon when shopping online because it is easily relatable with our regular shopping experience. If we try to replace this shopping cart icon to another icon, say cards (signifying payment), it will be hard for the users to recognize and relate to it.

The recognition time is much shorter than the recall time due to the simple fact that our brains are wired to recognize the things that we see frequently as against fairly new ones.

Use industry standard visual cues, layouts, patterns when designing tooltips, icons, buttons, etc.

Give Feedback To Your Users

Just like we accept a response from the person we are in conversation with, the same goes when interacting with websites and apps.

Additionally, the absence of human interaction on the web necessitates a response for letting your user know what’s going on.

Common feedbacks can include:

A single change in color of interaction buttons
Letting your users know how much the load time is
Their progress on the tutorial and the product tour (if any)
Letting them know the exact requirements when creating new passwords
Pinpointing the error when filling out long forms

You can leverage microinteractions to keep your users engaged. Microinteractions are the cherry on top of your beautiful UI (that is if you like cherries :p).

Rotating buttons, color changes, different cursors when on links, etc are all great and subtle examples of microinteractions.

Design An Intuitive Navigation Route

This may sound a little vague so allow me to elaborate.

When we say intuitive navigation, we refer to the predefined routes and interactions that a user is likely to take. When your users pause to understand a certain function or take time to complete any task, look into the navigation route again.

Try to point out why your user left your website or app in the middle of the product tour. Were they given the option to skip the tour or they simply abandoned it in between?

Was there something that distracted your users? Perhaps they got confused because of the different elements present, etc.

We recommend that you try to anticipate where your users can get stuck and change it accordingly.

The idea behind an intuitive design is that it confers to the established patterns of the industry or from the market leaders as well.

Let Your CTA Stand Out

This should ideally be a given while designing a winning UI. However, there is a big possibility of missing out on this one when you are in the flow.

We recommend that the CTA should be the most highlighted element on the page. You can do this via color play, text labels, font, and varying size, white space, etc. There should be no other element more enticing than your CTA.

Another point to keep in mind is that the CTA copy should be short but concise. CTA, in our opinion, should not exceed 5 words (ideal limit being 3 words). Avoid multiple CTA, for this reason, read the point below.

Limiting Your User’s Cognitive Load

What do you think is easier, ordering from a 3 items menu or 30 items menu? For most of us, it would be 3. When offered with multiple options, the human brain tends to be indecisive.

Also, according to psychologist George Miller’s theory of chunking, humans’ working memory is capable of handling seven plus or minus two “chunks” of information.

When we tend to put a lot of information out there, the majority of it is bound to be forgotten by your users and even overwhelm them. Thus, why not limit it from the beginning itself?

You can always try to break down all your information into simple forms or categorize them to reduce crowding on any given page.

We know how difficult it is to design something that resonates with a wide demographic and we also know for a fact that it’s impossible to please every single one of your users. These tips will ensure maximum engagement and stickiness.

And if you want the UI/UX specialists to analyze and help revamp your UI then get in touch with us here.