Hi,
I'm planning on building a private API for a CodeIgniter web application I have. I've found a tutorial for that which shows me how to do it using pre-built libraries.
I'm very new to this so my questions is: shall I use and rely on these libraries? or shall I learn how to build it from scratch in order to have complete control over it? also, do you have any tips of someone like me who's just getting started with APIs?
Your help is so much appreciated :)
When I decided that I was going to write an API, I was still in the early stages of learning CodeIgnitor so I didn't use it for developing the API. I think even now, I would probably still go the route of writing it all myself and not use a framework. This is mainly because I like to keep things as slim as possible and I feel that is more likely to happen without using a framework.
To get me started, I found this tutorial to be really helpful.
Of course it's up to you but I would really suggest using my libraries. The code has already been tried and tested by several large public web-apps and I recently added in key management, logging and request throttling.
Months of coding has gone into those libraries and they have been used to death, so it will be way easier that writing your own.
Just have a look through the code as you go so you understand how everything works. It's pretty flexible and getting more flexible as it goes.