I was working with Google APIs over the last couple days while building Google Spreadsheet to API tools. It gave me a chance to look around the Google Developers Area and rediscover some of the positive approaches the API pioneer brings to the table.
In this post I wanted to highlight the Google Drive Code Libraries. While the Google approach isn't perfect, I think it sets a good bar for what can be achieved by API providers when delivering their own API code libraries.
I think the languages represented are the baseline for any modern API, and all API providers should consider providing the following languages:
- .NET
- Go
- Java
- JavaScript
- Node.js
- Objective-C
- PHP
- Python
- Ruby
Languages like Go and Node.js are definitely forward leaning, but represent very fast growing areas of the API integration space.
Java and Objective-C represent the mobile space, something API providers can't be ignoring in 2013.
If your target audience is the enterprise, you have to have .NET and Java as part of your API library.
PHP, Python and Ruby are the web staples, that are default for any API that is catering to general web developers.
It should get easier to generate code libraries automatically for API providers who have developed some sort of API definition for their APIs, but for others you will still have eto hand-roll your own code lbiraries.
