This article covers best practices for integrating third-party APIs, focusing on performance and reliability in production environments.
•Intelligent caching strategies (Redis, Memcache, requests-cache) with careful TTL tuning and cache invalidation logic are essential for reducing latency and API call costs.
•Asynchronous task processing (threading, webhooks, worker queues) allows immediate responses to users while deferring background work like payment processing, inventory updates, and email notifications.
•Rate limiting must be handled gracefully using retry logic, exponential backoff, and batch API endpoints to avoid user-facing errors and potential overage charges.
•Robust error handling requires understanding each API's error response format and status codes to deliver user-friendly messaging instead of hard failures.
•Logging and profiling tools help identify slow code paths and distinguish between API-side errors and application-side input errors.
