What is ReadMe Build?

There are two sides to every API. There is the creator and the consumer. Build is a developer platform that makes it dead simple to create and consume API's.

To better understand what build does, lets take a look at problems both creators and consumers face, and see how build addresses those problems.

Creator

After a creator writes the business logic for an API, there's still plenty to do before they can push it out to users. Here's a list of things creators still have to implement and maintain after writing their business logic.

Versioning
Rate Limiting
Auth / API Keys
Documentation

As a creator, Build lets you forget about the problems listed above, so that you can focus solely on your business logic. Here's how a typical API creation flow looks while using Build.

$ api init
Write business logic.
$ api deploy

That's it.

Consumer

Consumers face a lot of problems too. The crux of the issue stems from all API's implementing the same thing differently. For example, when you authenticate yourself to an API do you do it through an endpoint? OAuth Flow? What headers do you have to specify? Do you need an API Key? Or is a token generated?

All API's that are on the build platform follow the same, simple standard. Authentication for every API follows the same pattern. Here's an example of a consumer authenticating and making a call to a math API.

const api = require('api').config('<<user>>');

api('math').run('multiply', { numbers: [6,2] }).then((response) => {
  console.log(response)
})

import api

api = api.config('<<user>>')

val, res = api('math').run('multiply', {
  'numbers': [3,4,5]
})

print(val)

require 'api'

api = Build::Api.new
api.config('<<user>>')
response = api.run('math','multiply', {
  :numbers => [3,4,5]
})

print response

Want to use a file uploader instead of a math API? Just change api('math') to api('fileUploader').

Build makes it dead simple to start using another API.

Summary

Build is a developer platform to create, manage, and consume API's.