So, you want a real-time API. Where do you start?

You’re convinced of the benefits of a real-time API and know what data you want to make available through it. But you’ve probably got a number of questions playing on your mind:

• What method do I use to expose the data?
• Do I increase the allowed polling interval of my REST API? (Please don’t) or offer HTTP Long-Polling, HTTP Streaming and/or WebSocket API endpoints?
• Or should I offer WebHooks?
• What format should my data be in?
• Are there any tools like API Blueprint, Swagger or RAML for real-time to help?
• Are there any real-time frameworks built with APIs in mind?
• And how do I go about scaling a real-time API?

In this talk I gave at API Strat Berlin as part of the Architecture, Scalability, and Microservices session, I hope you’ll have a much clearer picture of where to start when building your real-time API.