Development · Advanced · 18 min read
API Integration Best Practices
Payments, email, maps, logins — modern apps are built by connecting services. Done well, integrations are invisible. Done badly, they leak keys, lose data, and break silently.
1. Keep secrets off the page
API keys belong on your server, never in code the browser downloads. Anything a visitor can see in their browser tools, a stranger can see too.
2. Plan for failure
Every external service goes down eventually. Decide what your user sees when a request fails or times out — a clear message beats a silent spinner or a broken page.
3. Validate what you send and receive
Check user input before it leaves your system, and check the response before you use it. Services change their answers; defensive checks turn a future breaking change into a log message instead of an outage.
4. Respect rate limits
- Read the limits before you build, not after you're blocked.
- Cache answers that don't change often.
- Retry failures with a pause, not a hammer.