User Avatar John Doe
Home / Developer / Community / Forum / Topic #124

Exploring the New API Features and Best Practices

Posted by API Innovator on | 35 Replies

Hello everyone!

I've been diving deep into the recently released v2.0 of our API, and I'm absolutely thrilled with the new capabilities. The introduction of asynchronous endpoints and enhanced webhooks is a game-changer for real-time data synchronization. I wanted to start a discussion to share some insights, best practices I've discovered, and address common pitfalls.

Here are a few initial observations:

I've put together a small example demonstrating how to leverage the asynchronous capabilities for a batch data import task. You can find it below:


import requests
import time

API_ENDPOINT = "https://api.devconnect.com/v2/async_task"
API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY" # Replace with your actual API key

headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

data_to_process = [{"id": i, "value": f"data_{i}"} for i in range(1000)]

payload = {
    "task_type": "batch_import",
    "data": data_to_process,
    "callback_url": "https://your-service.com/webhook"
}

print("Submitting asynchronous task...")
response = requests.post(API_ENDPOINT, json=payload, headers=headers)
response_json = response.json()

if response.status_code == 202: # Accepted
    task_id = response_json.get("task_id")
    print(f"Task submitted successfully. Task ID: {task_id}")

    # Polling for status (in a real app, you might use webhooks)
    status_endpoint = f"https://api.devconnect.com/v2/task_status/{task_id}"
    print("Polling for task completion...")
    while True:
        time.sleep(10) # Wait for 10 seconds before checking again
        status_response = requests.get(status_endpoint, headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"})
        status_data = status_response.json()
        status = status_data.get("status")
        print(f"Current status: {status}")
        if status in ["completed", "failed"]:
            print(f"Task finished with status: {status}")
            if status == "completed":
                print(f"Result URL: {status_data.get('result_url')}")
            break
else:
    print(f"Error submitting task: {response.status_code} - {response.text}")

I'm eager to hear your experiences and any tips you have to share. Let's make the most of this powerful new API together!

Replies (35)

User Avatar Schema Architect

Great post, API Innovator! I completely agree about the webhook security. I've implemented a middleware on my server to check the `X-Hub-Signature-256` header before processing any incoming webhook data. It adds a layer of trust that’s essential.

Here’s a quick Python snippet for verifying signatures:


import hmac
import hashlib

def verify_signature(payload_body, signature, secret):
    calculated_signature = hmac.new(secret.encode(), payload_body.encode(), hashlib.sha256).hexdigest()
    return hmac.compare_digest(signature, calculated_signature)

# Example usage:
# secret = "YOUR_WEBHOOK_SECRET"
# signature = request.headers.get('X-Hub-Signature-256')
# payload_body = request.get_data(as_text=True)
# if verify_signature(payload_body, signature, secret):
#     print("Signature verified!")
# else:
#     print("Invalid signature!")
User Avatar Data Broker

Thanks for the async example! I ran into an issue where my polling loop was too aggressive, hitting the status endpoint too frequently. The documentation suggests a backoff strategy. Has anyone implemented exponential backoff for polling?

User Avatar Cloud Streamer

For those using the new webhook features, remember to handle the `X-Forwarded-For` header if your service is behind a proxy, to get the original client IP for logging or security purposes.

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