Taking ownership of the challenges and problems of owning a grotty API and turning a possible tragedy into a rebirth by Joyce Stack (Mendeley)
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Mendeley is transitioning their legacy API to a new version by breaking it into independent services. This involves analyzing the existing monolithic codebase, identifying problems like inconsistent standards and dead code, and accepting that the legacy API is not sustainable long-term. The new API v1 will focus on independent release cycles, versioning, and prioritizing client needs through dogfooding and developer portals. Making services disposable and recognizing when codebases grow too large are lessons learned from this process.
Taking ownership of the challenges and problems of owning a grotty API and turning a possible tragedy into a rebirth by Joyce Stack (Mendeley)
- 1. 1 Mendeley Taking ownership of legacy APIs Joyce  Stack  /  @MendeleyStack
- 2. World of Researchers 2 5 Build institutional Reputation showcase Impact find & win Grants Promote research expand Institutional network Fulfil Administrative duties Imposing researchers with many challenges & KPIâs Doing Research But how about my PASSION?
- 3. 3 Desktop Web Mobile Free Academic Software! Cross-Platform (Win/Mac/Linux/Mobile)! All Major Browsers What is Mendeley?
- 5. 5 Background No. You canât have that.
- 6. 6 âNo we canât add more usersâ âNo we canât add a column to that tableâ âNo we canât do realtime syncâ âNoâ
- 7. Monolith 7
- 8. 8 Tackling the monolith. Weâre going on a dig.
- 9. What did we find? ⢠Different methodologies ⢠Custom MVC framework ⢠FIXMEs and TODOs ⢠Spaghetti junction of code ⢠Dead code 9
- 10. 10 Bargaining Maybe we can live with it, we can cope.
- 11. 11 Problems ⢠7 years organic growth ⢠No independent release cycles ⢠Inconsistent standards ⢠Eternal version 1 ⢠API != product ⢠API with no client ⢠Privileged citizens
- 12. 12 Depression Whatâs the point? Itâs doooooooomed!
- 13. 13 Acceptance Just deal with it.
- 15. Reality ⢠Your first client will hate you ⢠You wonât make them care about the new API ⢠You will compromise on design ⢠Your client will have specific behaviour ⢠You will feel REST symmetry pain ⢠You will feel that itâs never ending 15
- 17. Birth of API v1 ⢠Consuming clients ⢠Quick deployments ⢠Versioning ⢠Dog fooding ⢠A dev portal ⢠SDKs 17
- 18. 18 Final Thoughts The lessons learned bit.
- 19. Focus people on the long term 19
- 20. 20 Software is not an asset
- 22. 22 Recognise when its too big
- 24. 24 Test your chosen versioning strategy early
- 25. 25 Think about lifecycle of your resources
- 26. Design your resources, not service calls 26
- 27. 27 Donât let your deployment architecture affect your API
- 28. 28 Think about how new team structures can affect your cost of change
- 29. KĂźbler-Ross Grief Cycle ⢠âItâs fine. Itâs not too badâ ⢠âWho can I blame?â ⢠âMaybe we can live with itâ ⢠âItâs too big a problem. Doomedâ ⢠âMight as well get on with itâ 29 denial anger bargaining depression acceptance
- 30. Thank you 30 ⢠Find me on Twitter @MendeleyStack ⢠Icons made by Freepik from Flaticon - Licensed under Creative Commons BY 3.0