How many APIs does your organization rely on? A 2020 study by Slashdata found that 89% of developers use APIs, and the vast majority are using third-party APIs. These numbers aren’t unique to specific markets either. Regardless whether you are a software-first company, or offering a more tangible service, APIs are a vital part of modern infrastructures. Relying on APIs saves time, resources, and allows businesses to experiment in ways that otherwise would be hard to justify.

Async hooks are one of those Node.js features that seem interesting when you first see them, but in practice they end up failing to provide overtly obvious use cases. At their core, async hooks are a way to step into the lifecycle of any asynchronous resource. This may be a promise, a timeout, streams, DNS lookups, and even HTTP requests—like API calls. Most examples are focused on tracking the execution context or enhancing asynchronous stack traces.

In our previous article we talked about Synthetic Monitoring—a technique used to automate the testing and monitoring of resources by performing simulated user interactions and API calls. Now we're going to look at a complimentary technique called real-user monitoring which takes a more passive hands-off approach.

Testing uptime, response time, and other performance metrics in applications can take a few different shapes. One common technique is an approach known as synthetic monitoring. This form of performance monitoring doesn't rely on real users interacting with a service, and instead uses automated tools to mimic interactions. Then, the results are recorded and parsed just like other solutions.

Airtable has proven its staying power among tech unicorns as a customizable and collaborative project management platform that empowers users to track literally anything at work or at home. When the company announced its $185 million Series D funding in September, they generated a whole new round of buzzworthy headlines. For security leaders, this means that new requests for adding Airtable to tech stacks are likely on the way.

Some APIs provide data we benefit from. Others are hooks into an ecosystem that our users find valuable, and others provide features that are difficult to build. What happens when we need access to data that users expect, but an API doesn’t exist? Maybe you’re building an automotive application that would benefit from pulling driving statistics from the user’s car, but the manufacturer’s API is private.

FinTech isn't new, but the reach of its usefulness continues to spread into unexpected areas. One such area is card issuing. Card issuing is the ability of financial institutions to issue debit or credit cards—either physical or virtual. This might not seem like much, but when combined with new business needs and consumer trends we start to see interesting use cases crop up.

Measuring performance in Node.js applications can sometimes be a challenge. Do to the nature of the event loop and asynchronous code, determining the actual time a piece of code takes to execute requires tools built into the platform. First added in Node.js v8.5, as stableas of v12, the Performance Measurement APIs are stable and allow much more accurate monitoring than earlier implementations.

API gateways have become a standard component in modern application architectures. The gateway exposes application APIs to the Internet and serves as a logical place to enforce policy. This is a two-part series about enforcing API authorization policies in Apigee with Okta as the identity provider (IdP).