Ben:
Hello, and welcome to PodRocket. Today I'm here with Nirmalya Ghosh, who's a senior developer programs engineer at RapidAPI. And Pratham Kumar, who's a developer advocate at RapidAPI as well. How are you guys doing?

Pratham Kumar:
Well, doing great. Thanks for having us here.

Nirmalya Ghosh:
Doing awesome. Thanks for having us here, Ben.

Ben:
Yeah, I'm super excited to learn more about RapidAPI. Maybe you could start by giving a quick overview of, what's RapidAPI and how does it help developers build great applications?

Pratham Kumar:
Sure. Let me start. Okay. So RapidAPI is the world's largest API hub, where any developer can find APIs. There are over 35,000 APIs available on the RapidAPI Hub. Three million developers are using it, so it's a great thing. The current thing that RapidAPI solved, is of course, the problem of finding correct API. Because APIs is a very essential thing in the software development field. So finding and connecting to the right API, that's what RapidAPI solves. So yeah, this is the RapidAPI Hub.

Ben:
Got it. So give me an example, let's say I'm building an application and I'm looking for an API to do something with images, let's say I'm looking for a way to find a cat in an image, some kind of deep learning or something like that. How would I go about using RapidAPI to find that right API and then integrate it into my application?

Pratham Kumar:
Okay, so on RapidAPI there are 35,000 APIs, so it's really hard to find and connect with the correct one. But the thing is that rapid all the APIs are divided into categories and collections, so for example, you are looking for some kind of image recognition API. So you can simply search, and the search feature is very cool, you can simply search for the RapidAPI's name and for names and descriptions. For example, you are looking for image recognition API, you can search for image recognition and you will get tens of thousands of API related to this particular category.

Pratham Kumar:
Just click on the API, subscribe to it. If it is free, then you can test right into your browser. If it is paid or freemium API, then you have to subscribe to it first, then you can use it. So it's pretty interesting. The other thing is that you want to use your API locally on your machine or your code. So how can you do that? You can simply copy, paste the code snippets that RapidAPI provide. And the best part is that RapidAPI provides code snippets in 20 different languages, plus 40 different library support, so that's the real interesting thing. The process is a little easier, it just takes two or three minutes and you will get a suitable API for your software.

Ben:
And if it were an API that I had to pay for, can I do billing through the RapidAPI platform or I'd have to go to that third-party and set up my account first and then integrate the API?

Nirmalya Ghosh:
So there are two ways. One is, you can consume APIs from RapidAPI. You can also host your own APIs on RapidAPI and get it monetized. Now, What you're asking for is, I think in the second category, if you want to host your own API. So if you want to host your own API, we give you all the tools that are necessary for you to host it, do rate limiting, authentication and everything.

Nirmalya Ghosh:
And you can also monetize it, so if you want to have something like, I will give all the users of my API, let's say, the first 10,000 calls free. But after 10,000 calls, I want to have something like 0.02 dollars per hundred calls. You can do that. You can also set up different forms of subscription for your APIs. And we do that out of the box, so handling all the edge cases for your APIs, is already done and set up on RapidAPI, you don't have to worry about it. Whereas, if you are doing your own marketing, your own setup, in your own infrastructure, that will take you probably a lot of time and a lot of dedication and development trying to handle, and RapidAPI handles all those things for you.

Ben:
Got it. So if I'm an API developer, I want to launch a new API, if I want to launch in the RapidAPI platform, I don't have to do all the work of building the boiler plate of rate limiting and monetization and authentication, all that stuff. I can just do whatever the core competency of my API is, if it's image recognition or whatnot, I launch in the platform and you handle everything else and users can then just interact with my API.

Pratham Kumar:
That's true. And the one other thing that I want to mention here is that RapidAPI is much more than just selling your API because here you can publish fully documented API. You can document every endpoint, you can loan some kind of codes or maybe document where developers can learn and then they can use your API effectively. So RapidAPI Hub, it's much more than just selling and buying APIs.

Ben:
And what if I'm a business that already has APIs, I already have documentation on my website, I've already invested in building authentication and monetization and rate limiting and what not? I have my APIs and some customers just access them directly from me. What does it look like if I want to have them exposed in the RapidAPI platform? What is the integration process I'd have to go through?

Pratham Kumar:
Sure.

Nirmalya Ghosh:
Definitely. So let's say I am a developer and I am using one API currently. And now I want to consume another third-party API. The first thing that I will have to do, is use a separate API key because I'm using two different services. I'm using two different third-party softwares. But if all your APIs are hosted using RapidAPI, there is only one API key. If you are using different APIs also, you don't have to worry about the API, which is a huge deal because it's very difficult for any company or any product to keep track of, let's say 10 or 15 third-party API keys.

Nirmalya Ghosh:
RapidAPI solves that problem for you. You have only one API key, you can consume any number of APIs you want. So as a company, if you have, say 10 APIs, which are hosted on RapidAPI Hub, the user or the consumer can already connect to it if they already have an account on RapidAPI Hub, they can directly consume those APIs. They don't have to worry about anything else. If they have the API key, it's done. Whereas if you don't have your APIs hosted on RapidAPI Hub, the consumer will have to figure out your documentation, your documentation might be different for different APIs, which is a headache. But since RapidAPI consumes everything in a single format using a single API key, you don't have to worry about those things. So that's the beauty of RapidAPI Hub.

Ben:
And if I have my existing API already, do requests get proxied through RapidAPI or how does it work on an architectural level?

Nirmalya Ghosh:
If you are hosting your APIs on RapidAPI Hub, then obviously, the RapidAPI host will be taken care of. RapidAPI will take care of the proxy and everything because we have to have some sort of mechanism through which we can do the rate limiting, we can do the authentication and all this. And so RapidAPI has to have an infrastructure in front of your API, which prevents you from all those things from happening, like rate limiting issues, authentication issues, such like that.

Ben:
So in a sense, there's functionality of an API gateway, you're kind of merging the lines between a traditional API gateway and then this public marketplace. Curious, how do you see the API gateway market and how does it relate to the market that you see RapidAPI living in?

Nirmalya Ghosh:
It's slightly different because you can think of us as an API marketplace, but that's only a subset of it. We offer so many functionalities, which are not only marketplace. Yes, you can monetize your APIs, but it's not only about that. You can manage your APIs there, it's not only about hosting your APIs, but you can manage your APIs. What I think about RapidAPI is that we work with the developers to make the development experience better. We don't only think about how you can easily host your APIs, but how you can easily consume your APIs by third-party developers. So it's not only as an API getaway or API marketplace, but it's much, much more than that.

Pratham Kumar:
Also, RapidAPI has so many different products, like RapidAPI for Teams, RapidAPI for Enterprise Hub, RapidAPI Client also. So it's not just RapidAPI Hub, it's a hub, which is a great thing that it has 35,000 APIs, but so many other products. And currently, we are endeavored, we are working on providing better API educational content, so RapidAPI is all about APIs.

Ben:
Yeah, so tell me a bit about the teams and enterprise product.

Pratham Kumar:
Well, RapidAPI Enterprise Hub, as companies go there acquiring more and more microservices in their architecture, so RapidAPI Enterprise Hub basically is a platform that unlocks innovation so that it can provide resource duplication as well. Whereas, the employees within the organization can find and connect the internal APIs. Because for example, our organization having 500 plus APIs, it's really hard for their employees to find their internal APIs and deliver better softwares. That's where I believe Enterprise Hub can help.

Ben:
Got it. So if I have a big enterprise, tons of application teams, tons of microservices and different teams are building and exposing APIs, I guess you run into the problem where people internally don't even know all the APIs available, so you have a microcosm of the wider marketplace within the organization. In companies that use the team's enterprise product, I imagine they use the gateway functionality, in terms of auth and rate limiting and whatnot as well.

Nirmalya Ghosh:
Not only for teams, obviously for teams who use that, but not only about teams, for individuals also who want to host their APIs. Sometimes what happens is, some of the APIs, they need to be public. But some of the APIs, they need to be private. So in those cases we have to handle auth and all those things. Yes, some of those things can be customized for enterprise, some of those things can be customized for teams, but the basic version is always there so that anyone can use it. If you are hosting your APIs on RapidAPI Hub, you can use them.

Ben:
And in terms of teams versus enterprise, is it just more enterprise features like access control and audit logs and stuff? Or on the enterprise tier, is there more that goes above and beyond the basic teams product?

Nirmalya Ghosh:
Yes. While there are a bunch of stuff or a bunch of features that are available only for enterprise, but there are certain things that... It's very difficult to tell you about those things because those kind of things are somehow tailored to the customer that is using those. For example, the kind of branding or the kind of feature requests that comes from those kind of services, we take those and try to implement what we can. But it depends on the requirements, it depends on the contract and a bunch of other issues as well.

Ben:
And I'm curious, when you talk to folks using the enterprise product, do developers within that enterprise typically use a mix of both, internally exposed and marketplace APIs? Because I imagine there's a difference, internally there's probably less hoops and red tape to jump through, in terms of working with an existing API. But then if you want to just go on the marketplace, you're going to have to go through security reviews and really vet out a third-party vendor who you might be sending data to. Does RapidAPI help there at all, to streamline the process of a developer in a large enterprise, quickly integrating APIs from external sources?

Pratham Kumar:
Yeah, using the RapidAPI enterprise, definitely you can subscribe to internal APIs and as well as APIs that are available on RapidAPI Hub or basically RapidAPI marketplace. So RapidAPI backend handles everything about securities and stuff like this, so it's not anything about... I don't think there is any problem, in terms of security, or stuff like this, RapidAPI handles all.

Nirmalya Ghosh:
Just to mention one more thing, we take our security very seriously because it's not only reliant on one API, which is being consumed internally, it's being consumed by so many companies, so many individuals, so many products out there. So security is very important, RapidAPI and we look at it with utmost care.

Ben:
So tell me about some of the developer relations work you're doing. It sounds like you're investing a lot in building a Twitter audience and other communities, so what is your strategy there?

Pratham Kumar:
Well, strategy is basically simple, we are trying to provide more and more API educational content. So we are trying to build a huge API developer community on Twitter. Currently we are focused mainly on Twitter because there are lots of developers out there. And what I mean by educational content, is that we are providing educational content using our platform, which is RapidAPI Guides. Our three platforms basically, RapidAPI Guides, RapidAPI Learn and RapidAPI Courses. RapidAPI Guides is much more than just a blog because there, any developer, any reader can basically read about any API topic and they can play around with interactive components. Whereas, RapidAPI Learn, it's challenges with solution where you can track your score, as well as quizzes, and you can directly tweet out your score. So it's pretty interactive components that we have built at RapidAPI Learn. And RapidAPI Courses is completely free video courses that are by developer experts and RapidAPI. So these three platforms that we are currently built to provide better API developer education and build our developers community.

Ben:
So one common challenge when building an application that involves a bunch of external APIs, is testing. We touched on this a little bit earlier, but curious to hear more in depth, how does RapidAPI potentially help with testing and any best practices or recommendations that your team gives out to customers who are building on the platform?

Nirmalya Ghosh:
We have a product for that. I think Pratham is the best person to describe that.

Pratham Kumar:
No, you go first, please. Then I'll add my point.

Nirmalya Ghosh:
We already have one integrated software or a feature, which is called RapidAPI Testing. And using RapidAPI Testing, you can automate those testing, whether your APIs are working fine, or whether your APIs ask for the spec that you have provided. Whether they're throwing any kind of errors or those kind of issues, the typical issues that happens when you want to build an API and maintain that. So using RapidAPI Testing, you can just automate all those things and it runs those tests based on a conjure, every few hours or every other day if you want, you can always configure that.

Nirmalya Ghosh:
And you can always get a mail that if something is going wrong, you get a notification that this API of this part of this application is not working well, you might need to handle it. So using that, we provide you the opportunity to look at your APIs as... Not like you have built it and we are forgetting about it, but you have set up automated tests so that you always ensure that your APIs are up to spec, APIs are always working as expected. From the status codes, to the response body, to the headers, to authentication, everything you can automate the testing of.

Pratham Kumar:
And yeah, the RapidAPI Testing software is pretty intuitive. We at RapidAPI always take care about the developer experience, so creating tests is pretty easy, you can just drag and drop between tests and schedule your test, automate your test, so stuff like this.

Ben:
Aside from testing, what are some other common challenges that customers have when building API driven applications and how does RapidAPI help with those?

Pratham Kumar:
Well, basically for me about the APIs, the first and foremost problem about building an API is that it's an option. So how will you increase that option of your API? Building an API is other thing and increasing that option is other thing. So RapidAPI has three millions users, so that if you post your API or publish your API on RapidAPI Hub, it means that you are making your API accessible to three millions users, 3 million developers. The thing about API development is that, of course, good resources, good educational content that we are providing a dev rel to RapidAPI. RapidAPI Testing, RapidAPI Client, or that you can test any API directly into your browsers. So I think that RapidAPI provides all the tools that are required, in terms of API development.

Ben:
So speaking of tools, what's on the roadmap for the future? To the extent you can share, what does 2022 look like? And what kind of new features or new capabilities are coming to the platform?

Pratham Kumar:
Definitely, we are working towards providing a better API development, in terms of education or coding or stuff like this. I'm not sure about 2022 exec plans, but our main focus is definitely clear, provide better API development. Nirmalya, would you like to add something here?

Nirmalya Ghosh:
Yes. In an API development company, even though that API is being used by almost every software out there, there is a question that comes up generally, probably on some social media sites like Twitter and all, why is there an API for it? Why do I need API? What is an API? And we are discussing internally, our developer relations team that, how can we do better so that we bridge that gap? We help people understand what APIs are and why you need to understand it about API. When you are building something, you need to consume a third-body API, because let's say you are building an e-commerce, if you are building everything on your own infrastructure, it becomes difficult for you. Building stuff like authentication is hard.

Nirmalya Ghosh:
And why do you want to solve that problem when it's already solved? So based on those things, we are trying to help educate all the developers who are interested in this, learning about it. And that's why we have created RapidAPI Learn. We have created RapidAPI guides and courses where developers or people like us who teach the other developers that this is what APIs are, and this is how you can use it. Instead of reinventing the same wheel, you can just consume whatever is out there. And RapidAPI in and all, it helps you bridge all of those gaps. Using RapidAPI you don't have to worry about, as you mentioned, image manipulation API. If you are going to build your own image manipulation API, you have to learn probably Python for the mission language, probably some other thing, Node.js probably, a few other languages and tools to figure out everything.

Nirmalya Ghosh:
But some of those APIs might already be hosted on RapidAPI and you might be able to use it, maybe they're free or freemium, in certain cases. So what we're trying to do is that, build one place where you can understand our APIs, work with APIs, build your own software and build your next product out there. So that's what we're trying to do. And that's more on the railroad map for this year as well. And we are always trying to iterate about what we think our customers need, what we understand our customers need and iterate on those, to bridge the gap and to build a better development ecosystem out there.

Ben:
So thanks so much for joining us today, it's been great to learn about RapidAPI. For folks that are interested in checking out the products, it's rapidapi.com. Easy website. Any other resources you'd recommend if people want to learn more, where to check out?

Pratham Kumar:
Well, rapidapi.com/hub is where you will find all the APIs, and if you want to particularly learn about APIs, then our DevRel stack, which is RapidAPI Learn, RapidAPI Guides and RapidAPI Courses. And apart from this, we are posting great educational content on Twitter, so make sure to follow us @Rapid_API.

Ben:
Great. Thanks again.

Pratham Kumar:
Thanks.

Nirmalya Ghosh:
Thank you for having us.

Speaker 4:
Thanks for listening to PodRocket. Find us @PodRocketPod on Twitter or you could always email me, even though that's not a popular option. It's Brian@logrocket.