The Zapier Engineering Blog

At Zapier, we love webhooks, because they provide near-instant access to data. When enabled with webhooks, applications can send notifications when data you care about changes. As you can imagine, immediate access to updates makes users incredibly happy. So why would we no longer recommend something that makes users happy?...

Node JS remains a popular programming language used at companies of all sizes and types: From startups to large enterprises, you’ll find Node’s server-side JavaScript at play. As such, it’s also become a common choice for building APIs. While you don’t need a framework to support a Node-driven API,...

Imagine yourself as an explorer, braving high sea or rough terrain to discover new routes. Along the way you’ll meet many people, most of whom won’t speak your language. An interpreter would be crucial to your trip, making it possible to communicate and navigate unfamiliar territory.

When building or consuming...

You’ve probably seen software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies boast about integrations with other services. And for good reason–users love to connect their apps together. Behind the scenes, APIs and a little code make it possible to exchange data between services. Sometimes these integrations increase signups and often they’ll decrease churn, as...

You just received an email from an angry developer. Something is wrong in your documentation, and the developer just spent hours figuring it out. Now it's your turn to update the documentation and figure out how to avoid those issues in the future. But how?

It’s hard to create great...

Most APIs deliver their responses the exact same way to every client. That’s by design; developers need to know what to expect.

There are plenty of circumstances where what’s returned is not quite what a developer wants, though. Some APIs provide flexibility in the types and amount of data in...

Around four years ago, a college student named Ryan Seys received a challenge from a friend. It was not your typical collegiate dare. Ryan’s friend instead suggested they both attempt to commit public code to GitHub for 30 days straight. The friend just made it a week, but Ryan hit...

How many introverted programmers does it take to tell a light bulb joke? One. It does not have to be a group activity, and the other can check for off-by-one errors.

In addition to being witty, this programming joke also represents the classic stereotype of the introverted programmer. It might...

In the last 10 years, APIs have gone from nice-to-have to must-have, certainly for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. At the same time, users today are more impatient and expect more instant and interconnected apps. To answer user needs, developers are now adding webhooks to their APIs. Webhooks are the mechanism through...

We really love APIs. They're what power Zapier, and many of our team have been built and supported them throughout our careers.

Yet, keeping up on such a rapidly-changing topic as APIs can be a daunting task. There's no best API trade magazine to keep in your lobby, no single...