Breakthrough for the Aviation Industry Using Facade Pattern in Airline API

Written by Mir Musthafa Ali Pasha

Middleware Practice Head at Royal Cyber

The API Facade Design Pattern is an answer to a design problem that rises for API designers when internal and back-end systems records are too complex to expose straight to the application developers.

It is a software-design pattern generally used in object-oriented programming. Like a facade in architecture, a facade is an object that helps with a front-facing interface masking complex underlying or structural code.

Actually, the problem is not creating an API for just one big system but creating an API for an array of corresponding systems that all need to be used to make an API valuable to a developer.

The primary goal of an API Facade Pattern is to make the internal systems effective and make it useful for the app developer.

Uses: To deliver a simple interface to a complex subsystem. Subsystems often get more difficult as they evolve.

Implementation Method:

Implementing an API facade pattern involves three steps.

  1. Design an ideal API – design the URLs, request parameters and responses, payloads, headers, query parameters, and so on. The API design should be self-consistent.
  2. Implement the design with data stubs. This lets application developers to use the API and give the feedback even before the API is connected to internal systems.
  3. Integrate or mediate between the facade and the systems.

Small Problems

Using the three-step approach, we have disintegrated one big problem into three smaller problems. If we solve one big problem, we will be building up with the code and try to start from the business logic to a clean API interface. We would be exposing objects or tables, or RSS feeds from each silo, mapping it to the XML before exposing it to the app. It is a machine-to-machine configuration focused around an app that is difficult to get it right.

Solution – The API Facade Pattern

The best solution begins with thinking about the basics of product management. As the product needs to be reliable, relevant, and differentiated. When the product manager decides what the big picture is like, it is then up to the architects.

We recommend implementing an API facade pattern. This gives a virtual layer or buffer between the interface on top and the API implementation on the bottom. Where we essentially create a facade – a comprehensive view of what the API should be, and importantly it is the view from the perspective of the app developer and end-user of the apps they build.

Technical Overview

Use case: Create different airline as a microservice and call them by facade pattern.

Swagger:

Create new API for the facade interface.

Create the developer portal and use the above API in it.

Flight Tracker API

Clients can connect to the flight tracking through the API key, which provides access to all the live flight data. The flight tracker API lets clients to display the actual tracking of flights within their platform.

Using an API facade lets your enterprise to keep pace with developers real-time. Their world changes quickly and frequently, and they need to make apps that remain competitive in an ever growing and evolving marketplace.

It also has benefits internally in that it enables an API team to create an extensible API that allows new systems to be plugged in, allowing your organization to keep stride with both the marketplace and with shifting internal systems. Royal Cyber can help you in implementing, exploring and developing API-based applications.

Leave a Reply