
How to Isolate Client-Server Interaction Logic in iOS Applications
By Aleksandr Gaidukov
Client-server interactions play a vital role in most modern mobile applications. By leveraging available back-end services, these mobile applications can provide some really amazing functionalities. However, as mobile applications grow complex, it becomes essential to keep the networking module as clean and maintainable as possible - separated from the rest of the application logic.
In this article, Toptal freelance software engineer Alexander Gaidukov walks us through the design of a simple networking module that allows your iOS application to interact with RESTful APIs.
11 minute readContinue Reading

How Sequel and Sinatra Solve Ruby’s API Problem
By Boško Ivanišević
The rise of the web and mobile applications has led to an increased need for back-end API services. Ruby on Rails' philosophy seemingly makes it the ideal framework for creating back-end APIs. However, using Rails only for the API is overkill.
In this article, Freelance Software Engineer Boško Ivanišević explores alternatives to Rails and introduces us to two very mature and powerful gems, Sinatra and Sequel, which in combination provide powerful tools for creating server-side APIs.
9 minute readContinue Reading

Social Network APIs: The Internet’s Portal to the Real World
By Behsaad Ramez
Social networks are a rich source of user information. From a person’s current mood to endless streams of photos, there is by now probably a social network for each aspect of human life. From the development side, access to users' information can be an essential element in providing a truly personalized experience in any application.
In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Behsaad Ramez shows us how the APIs of some of these social networks stack against each other and how they may be leveraged to accumulate precious information about users.
14 minute readContinue Reading

Grape Gem Tutorial: How To Build A REST-Like API In Ruby
By Botond Orban
In this tutorial, Toptal Engineer Orban Botond demonstrates how to use the Grape gem -- a REST-like API micro-framework for Ruby -- to build backend support in Rails for a JSON API. Grape is designed to run as a mountable rack engine that complements your web applications without interfering with them.
15 minute readContinue Reading

Building a Rest API with the Bottle Framework
By Leandro Lima
REST APIs have become a common way to establish an interface between web back-ends and front-ends, and between different web services. The simplicity of this kind of interface, and the ubiquitous support of the HTTP and HTTPS protocols across different networks and frameworks, makes it an easy choice when considering interoperability issues.
Bottle is a minimalist Python web framework. It is lightweight, fast, and easy to use, and is well-suited to building RESTful services. In this article, I'll provide a walkthrough of how to build a RESTful API service using Bottle.
12 minute readContinue Reading

Building REST API for Legacy PHP Projects
By Arminas Zukauskas
Every once in a while PHP developers are charged with tasks that require them to extend the functionalities of legacy projects, a task that often includes building REST APIs. Building a REST API for PHP-based projects is challenging, but in the absence of proper frameworks and tools, it can also be a particularly difficult goal to get right. In this article, Toptal engineer Arminas Zukauskas shares his advice, with sample code, on how to build a modern structured REST API around existing legacy PHP projects.
11 minute readContinue Reading

A Brief Overview Of Vulkan API
By Nermin Hajdarbegovic
Here’s the Vulkan API in a hundred words or less: It’s a low-overhead, close-to-metal API for 3D graphics and compute applications. Vulkan is basically a follow-on to OpenGL. It was originally referred to as the “next generation OpenGL initiative,” and it includes a few bits and pieces from AMD’s Mantle API. Vulkan is supposed to provide numerous advantages over other GPU APIs, enabling superior cross-platform support, better support for multithreaded processors, lower CPU load, and a pinch of OS agnosticism.
15 minute readContinue Reading

Let LoopBack Do It: A Walkthrough of the Node API Framework You've Been Dreaming Of
By Jovan Jovanovic
While Ruby has Rails and Python has Django, the dominant application development framework for Node has yet to be established. But, there is a powerful contender gaining steam: LoopBack, an open source API framework built by StrongLoop, the creators of Express.
Let's take a closer look at LoopBack and it's capabilities by turning everything into practice and building an example application.
14 minute readContinue Reading

A Tutorial for Reverse Engineering Your Software's Private API: Hacking Your Couch
By Nikolay Derkach
Reverse engineering and hacking are usually related to malicious activities that result in sleepless nights of engineers responsible for system maintenance.
Reverse engineering is a tool that we can utilize to find the flaws and improve our software in many aspects. This article shows us how to use these techniques to learn more about different implementations of web API.
14 minute readContinue Reading
World-class articles, delivered weekly.
Toptal Developers
- Algorithm Developers
- Angular Developers
- AWS Developers
- Azure Developers
- Big Data Architects
- Blockchain Developers
- Business Intelligence Developers
- C Developers
- Computer Vision Developers
- Django Developers
- Docker Developers
- Elixir Developers
- Go Engineers
- GraphQL Developers
- Jenkins Developers
- Kotlin Developers
- Kubernetes Experts
- Machine Learning Engineers
- Magento Developers
- .NET Developers
- R Developers
- React Native Developers
- Ruby on Rails Developers
- Salesforce Developers
- SQL Developers
- Sys Admins
- Tableau Developers
- Unreal Engine Developers
- Xamarin Developers
- View More Freelance Developers
Join the Toptal® community.