[HN Gopher] Micro APIs for Everyday Use ___________________________________________________________________ Micro APIs for Everyday Use Author : friendly_chap Score : 180 points Date : 2021-06-24 15:28 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.m3o.com) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.m3o.com) | harrisonjackson wrote: | This is neat! A similar set of APIs I've used in the past is API | Layer - https://apilayer.com/ | | The PDF api was really easy to hook into for cleaner receipt | attachments in emails. | golondon wrote: | is this the latest pivot? are we going to see another completely | different business in 3 months? | zomglings wrote: | I don't understand your intention here. It seems like you are | shitting on the guy. | | He is trying to build something useful, which may take some | pivots, and that is nothing to be ashamed of. | IAmMaulik wrote: | This looks great! | blakbelt78 wrote: | Would you consider this product a competitor to RapidAPI? | adamhp wrote: | Would be cool to have a really lightweight auth service for | registering and logging in. Could still be ephemeral on the order | of hours. | | This seems like it would be easy to monetize (if that were | desired) by just increasing quotas / limits, or adding certain | features to any particular API that made QOL better. | pault wrote: | You can find a bunch of these if you search for jam stack | resources. | asim wrote: | Hey there. We've got you covered. Here's our user service that | includes user management and authentication | https://m3o.com/user | bsid wrote: | I'm working on a product in the auth space, would love to know | a bit more about your use case... also, why would you want | ephemeral auth? | nickreese wrote: | Really surprised this is the first I've seen of the idea for an | API marketplace that seems to get the developer UX right. Would | love to be an investor in this idea. | orliesaurus wrote: | Basically the old Blockspring platform but built for 2021 - looks | good! | mrtimo wrote: | This is great. I'm a college prof, and this is perfect for | teaching students how to use APIs. | asim wrote: | Thanks! Let us know if it ends up being used at your college :) | NanoWar wrote: | Where do I keep the Api key when I use this from a SPA? | transitivebs wrote: | Love the initiative; I'm sure you'll run into some of the same | lessons that I've learned building Saasify: | https://transitivebullsh.it/saasify-vc-feedback | | Happy to chat further about this space if you're interested && | keep up the great work building for devs | Jakobeha wrote: | I'm probably missing something - some of these APIs I get, but | some just seem useless. | | Why do I need an API to convert images? Find emojis? Convert | "John" to "Hello John"? (ok the helloworld service is just a | demo.) I can do that on the client using Javascript. | | Moreover, why this instead of something like AWS Lambda, where | you code your own service? Instead of prebuilt APIs, why not make | it more general? | | Don't get me wrong, this seems like a great service and I can see | some niche use cases. Also basic APIs for things like database | operations and authentication which can actually get pretty | complex, and like getting the weather which you can't do | yourself. But I can't really see the benefit to some of these | APIs, and a custom lambda-style service-creator seems better than | a lot of niche APIs and "submit a form if you want your API | here". | asim wrote: | Thanks for that. It really comes down to the target audience. | We have a lot API builder like platforms. In fact this is what | Micro was before (https://m3o.dev) but it turns out that's not | really what a lot of people want. Those who want to build APIs | already know how and tend to pick a cloud of choice to do it | on. Otherwise it's really down to reusability of building block | APIs we all tend to continually build. What GitHub did for | source code we want to do for APIs. | Jakobeha wrote: | Cool, thanks for the response. | | Btw, I suggest adding links to https://m3o.dev from | https://m3o.com and vice versa. Until your response I didn't | see that the former site existed. | musingsole wrote: | > Why do I need an API to convert images? Find emojis? Convert | "John" to "Hello John"? (ok the helloworld service is just a | demo.) I can do that on the client using Javascript. | | Twofold: First, it's similar to why they wouldn't just clone a | developer's API on the network. The system that can do image | conversion requires maintenance. A system that is calling an | API providing that image conversion offloads that maintenance | elsewhere (presumably to something that can manage the | maintenance more efficiently than someone who just incidentally | needs the feature). | | Second, APIs will become the primitives everything else is | built out of in time. Custom code in clients just become more | and more of a shim over time. | TamDenholm wrote: | Do you have a roadmap for the API's you'll be adding? | asim wrote: | Hey we don't yet have one to publicly share but will happily | put one up if more people are interested with potentially user | ranked priority so we get to the most requested ones first. | TamDenholm wrote: | That would be awesome. :) | _def wrote: | Is there something like this as open source and self hosted? | remram wrote: | Redis? | AaronFriel wrote: | 1. Why would I trust that this will stick around if I make a | business on this? | | 2. Why would I pay someone to "generate IDs" at $1/10k requests? | | 3. If the DB API was performant and supported full SQL, it looks | like it would cost $business I know of two orders of magnitude | more than current cloud spend to switch to it. (They would not, | because of compliance.) For whom is this the right pricing model | for? | | I compared the pricing here to Amazon Aurora Serverless | (https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/pricing/) with their example | of 110 operations/second. Their cost: $186/month, yours: | $28,512/month. | | 4. No SLAs, SLOs, SLIs, metrics, no data sovereignty or | retention/deletion policy, no privacy policy, no compliance | policy, no mention of encryption or details on how tokens are | generated, rotated, revoked. No mention of password security in | the user identity API. Why should I trust that you're not selling | my data or storing it on an SD card somewhere that anyone could | just grab and walk away with? | friendly_chap wrote: | Some of these services are proof of concepts/placeholders while | the others are coming out of the pipeline. So their price is | not necessarily final either. | | Admittedly the "library as a service" ones are more for niche | use cases, like how I go to a website sometimes to get the | current Unix timestamp. | | If you want an example $X_FORMAT id, paying 1/100 cent for it | is no big deal. | krat0sprakhar wrote: | Love this! I'm surprised this hasn't been done before (or it | has?) because it sounds so good. The list of APIs cover almost | 95% of all project ideas that I want to run on Cloud, so I'm | really excited to try this out. The simple pricing structure is | excellent as well. | | Good luck! | asim wrote: | Thanks for the positive feedback! What's that 5% you feel is | missing? We'd obviously love to build it and make sure we've | got everything covered. A couple on my list are a message queue | and probably the ability to run apps in a container from a git | URL. | jamestimmins wrote: | I love this, and can immediately see the value. | | Is there an opportunity for third party developers to add new | APIs? | asim wrote: | Hi, yes this is the end goal and for it to be entirely self | service. For now we're working directly with those third | parties and doing the integration ourselves but ideally we want | to let people do it themselves, display their own logos and | price the APIs however they see fit. Happy to chat further | about it and get ideas too on how we could speed this up. | 256DEV wrote: | I've actually just gone through the process of integrating my | currency API [1] with Micro. I really liked the idea for this | service and actually just emailed them asking your exact | question! The process was smooth and I was impressed by their | clear communication and very responsive development work. | | I've been a user of RapidAPI as both an API publisher & | consumer and I think I prefer this Micro model instead - API | curation, standardized docs etc. etc. RapidAPI can feel like a | bit of a free for all and even though it's technically one | entity proxying everything it's often felt to me like more of a | list of random services than something cohesive. I can | definitely see why Micro is describing their service as a sort | of AWS of useful APIs. | | [1] https://www.exchangerate-api.com | mana72 wrote: | I like this. How different are you from Abstract API | (https://www.abstractapi.com) though? | [deleted] | vira28 wrote: | when trying to create an api getting "There was an error creating | the key. Please try again later." | flipnotic wrote: | Question regarding "Sell your APIs on Micro." | | If a developer makes an API and it becomes popular on Micro, what | prevents Micro from cloning that API and cutting the dev out of | the proceeds? | asim wrote: | Because we don't want to do the hard work. We tried it already. | We initially started by managing all our own infrastructure, | building our own APIs from the ground up and it turns out | that's really hard. If anything we can never match the depth | and experience of someone who's already doing it. So it just | makes more sense to partner. We can probably provide some nice | features on top for caching and whatever else to protect the | third party API but otherwise the goal is to bring together a | fragmented market. | | Looking at it another way. I worked on open source for many | years. Seeing what AWS has done to open source projects, it's a | really dishonourable thing and while I get they're running a | business I think there were better ways to go about it than | just lifting a project and running it themselves. So for us | it's really about building a trustworthy business that empowers | individual devs and small teams. And you can't do that if you | try to cut out the people who got you to where you wanna go. | jokethrowaway wrote: | Why do support, q/a, maintenance, performance improvement for | hundreds API with thousands of quirks when you can sell shovels | as if they were made of gold? | | In a similar vein, how much visibility does micro API bring to | my API compared to established platforms? Even assuming it's a | lot, why not just publish my API on all of them? | jokethrowaway wrote: | Devs tend to like freedom and customisation. | | You're selling something for budding entrepreneurs who can't | afford a developer and marketing it to developers. | | The sooner you realise this, the earlier you'll be able to pivot | (like mashape did). | | Best of luck! | spzb wrote: | I literally just had the idea for something like this yesterday. | Congratulations on beating me to it! | yNeolh wrote: | I love the Idea but pricing seems a little... premium for | something is "beta". | | For example, Cache, a Get is 0.0001$ per request, so, with the | initial 5$ you would have 50k Gets that, given the nature of a | Cache seems extremely expensive. I guess your highest costs are | storing up to 1mb and egress traffic (If you are in a cloud | provider) but, even for a side project I could destroy the 5$ by | myself developing the project itself. | | Other than that, loving it, and I will try to give it a go in the | future, and check how the pricing affects my decisions. | asim wrote: | Thanks for the feedback on pricing. Yea we understand the | initial cost on some APIs might seem high in aggregate but what | you see is what you get. Unlike AWS who bill you in aggregate | across storage, egress, etc, we only have one cost - the price | per request. So some costs are baked in but we as developers | ourselves totally get it and pricing will definitely evolve. | Thanks again for the feedback. | rishav_sharan wrote: | Likely an unreasonable ask, specially considering that you | folks are just starting out - but have you considered adding | a free tier for hobbyists and pet projects? | | Most of you competitors have some form of free tier and | cheapo devs like me would prefer to embrace some complexity | over paying upfront for just simple projects. the $5 starting | bit is great but is not the same as a limited free tier. | | Overall love the idea and wish you all the best. Love the | minimalistic/functional UX of the site as well. | asim wrote: | Free tier was something we've had previously but it became | hard to justify because of our third party integrations and | what it costs us. It might be something we try figure out | in the future. Thanks for the feedback. | taberiand wrote: | I think $5 (or even $50) over the life of a hobby development | project is not at all unreasonable. If the service can be | integrated in less time than what is required to set up a free | solution, then you only have to save an hour or so for it to | pay for itself. | rank0 wrote: | This is awesome I will definitely be trying this out later! I | have been wanting a service like this in my head for ages. I hate | having to sign up for developer accounts for every single api I | want to hit. There SHOULD be a general purpose one stop shop | where I can pay by request for access to things like weather, | stock prices, ephemeral storage... | | Some advice - keep it simple! Simplicity and ease of use are big | selling points to me. It's very easy to get lost in feature | creep. | pbreit wrote: | Could someone explain to me this whole movement towards "Bearer" | authentication? I understand it in an Oauth context and using | JWTs. I don't really understand it with simple API keys. What is | the point of prefixing and API key with "Bearer "? | tobyjsullivan wrote: | A security token with the property that any party in possession | of the token (a "bearer") can use the token in any | way that any other party in possession of it can. | Using a bearer token does not require a bearer to | prove possession of cryptographic key material | (proof-of-possession). | | I think most people interpret that definition as including API | secret keys. I'd be curious to hear any alternative suggestions | as I run into this fairly regularly. | | https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6750#section-1.2 | | Also relevant: https://developer.mozilla.org/en- | US/docs/Web/HTTP/Authentica... | detaro wrote: | An Authorization header value is defined to be a pair of type | and the actual authentication/authorization information. | "Bearer" works, so why make up something else? | tyingq wrote: | I suppose it's because of the "micro" focus, but it seems odd to | me that the table name would be optional in the DB, and that the | KV api doesn't have namespaces. | | The navigation and layout of the site are terrific. | asim wrote: | Thanks for that feedback. Optional table name just means you | get a default table which is literally called "default". We | left out namespace in the kv API just to keep things simple but | I'll take that feedback onboard and think about changing it. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-24 23:00 UTC)