Optimizing API Interactions—Caller

We can make and receive API calls now, but we’re not necessarily doing so efficiently. Our goal isn’t just to be able to get things done but to do so scalably.
API latency is the amount of time it takes for a request to be processed and a response to be received, and it is a crucial component of user experience. It is also one of the critical aspects in most distributed systems that we need to optimize.

Because, as back-end engineers, we can be both the caller and the receiver, learning how to optimize our API interactions in both scenarios is essential. Let’s start with the caller.

Use caching effectively

Caching is one of the most effective ways to reduce API latency. By storing the results of frequently used API calls, we can quickly retrieve them from the cache instead of making a new request to the server. This can significantly reduce latency for repeated ...