Your thoughts on the suggested architecture for addressing the challenges and maintenance of third-party API implementation

[hamzehsarlak]

I have been working for a company that implements third-party marketplace APIs like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc. We have to deal with 300 different API structures (REST, GraphQl, WebSocket, WCF, SFTP, etc.). So as a software architect, I was thinking about using low-code, no-code platforms like Zapier, MuleSoft, etc. but I found it impossible to implement my needs on these platforms.

If you think about it, creating a product on Amazon has a standard flow, but your company's business is different from others. Do you know how many times these APIs have been implemented by developers across the world and how many hours they spend updating them and redeploying their solutions? Now imagine we had a low-code, open-source repository for these APIs.

Where you can:

1. Fork the flow and customize it based on our needs.
2. Create my application APIs in the repository to connect it to tons of APIs and flows without adding complexity to our system.
3. The issue page to discuss our problems using these flows and APIs. (something like GitHub)
4. Contribute to the maintenance of these APIs and Flows.
5. Create unit tests for each flow with mock data.
6. End-to-end data encryption
7. Schedule, Trigger and webhook for running the flow
8. Monitoring and execution logs for each flow
9. Technical docs

Real-world example:
Now: You hard-coded the implementation for SP-API to update product feeds(or you are using package). You need to change your code in case of bugs, changes, features, etc.

After:

1. You remove your API implementation (including Authentication) from your codebase.
2. On the suggested platform you can fork the standard flow (for example, the amazon-update-product-feeds) and customize it or create your own flow using a low-code (you can include your ERP, Inventory management, order management APIs in the flow as well). 
3. You design an API in your application to handle the response. (It means your business logic remains unchanged any changes will be handled by suggested low-code platform)
4. And finally, you run the flow by schedule, trigger or webhook, and in the flow, you call your internal API with response. 

It will brings many benefits to your system.

Topic for discussion:

• What are your thoughts on the suggested platform?
• What are your concerns?
• What functionalities are missed?
• Do you know any tools that has the same functionalities?