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Custom API Development & Data Integration Solutions

Ethan
CEO, Portable

A custom API integration allows you to extract data from a bespoke business application and load the data into your destination of choice. You can either build the connector, buy a no-code technology product, or hire a consultant to power your custom API integration.

Portable builds custom API integrations on-demand for clients. You get a no-code experience without the hassle of custom development, the pain of ongoing maintenance, or the hefty price tags that come along with data integration consulting or ETL consultants.

What is an API?

An application programming interface (API) is commonly used in micro-services architectures and defines a clear set of protocols for system integration.

When developing or interfacing with APIs, there are software solutions that can help accelerate software development, offer out-of-the-box API testing and REST API management, and streamline web API / web application development or the creation of mobile apps.

API architectures are typically backed by a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Microsoft Azure.

Unfortunately, not all public APIs are as widely used as Salesforce, PayPal, or Facebook.

As a result, there are plenty of scenarios where you will need to consider a custom API solution - in-house development, third-party API integration products, or outsourced API development services.

How Do You Create a Custom API Integration?

There are 4 steps involved in developing a custom API integration in-house:

1. Prioritization

2. Research

3. Development

4. Delivery

Prioritization

  • Discuss the project with your development team

  • Prioritize the work in product planning / sprint planning

Research

  • Locate the API documentation and outline the API functionality

  • Identify the authentication and authorization patterns for the API (OAuth 2.0, access tokens, client credentials, permissions, scopes, etc.)

  • Identify the API endpoints you will extract data from

Development

  • Write logic to generate requests, handle rates limits, and address API errors

  • Process the responses (JSON, XML, etc.) into a standardized format

  • Validate the data to make sure it is clean and ready to query

Delivery

  • Sync the formatted data to your destination

At this point, you're probably wondering - Is in-house development really the best solution?

Getting Started With a Custom API Integration Solution (5-Minute Setup)

Here's how you get started with a custom API integration using Portable.

  1. Create your account (with no credit card necessary)

  2. Request the integration

  3. Connect to the data source (or try one of our prebuilt connectors, like Stripe)

  4. Authenticate with the data source

  5. Select your data warehouse and configure your credentials

  6. Connect your data source to your analytics environment

  7. Run your flow to start replicating data from your source to your warehouse

  8. Set your data flow to run on a schedule

What Are the Use Cases for a Custom Integration?

1. Data analytics

2. Process automation

3. Product development

Data Analytics

Organize all of your data into a centralized repository to power insights and dashboards. Business leaders need data at their fingertips to make better strategic decisions that address the most pressing business needs. One of the first projects, when a company undergoes a digital transformation, is to improve decision-making with data pipelines and interactive dashboards.

Process Automation

Save time by automating manual tasks and business processes with point-to-point system integrations. Instead of manually copying information from one system to another, you can optimize business processes with an API integration service.

Product Development

Turn information into valuable data products that clients can purchase (either batch or real-time). These products could be insights, automated workflows, or raw data feeds for monetization.

Starting Moving Data Today

Portable's pricing is simple and predictable - Custom API development is free. Manually triggered syncs are free (no credit card required). And when you want to schedule a data flow, pricing is fixed (no obscure volume metrics or variability).

Portable offers 500+ connectors out-of-the-box - In addition to custom API integration development, Portable has a catalog of 300+ prebuilt API connectors. We support CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, marketing tools, payment gateways, social media platforms, and hundreds of other SaaS applications.

With Portable, you can easily connect a new data source to your data warehouse or database. No coding required!

Try Portable today!