‘Swell’ is a streaming API development tool which offers support for ’New Web’ techniques, built
by Anthony Terruso, Brandon Marrero, Jason Ou & Kyle Combs.
The team decided to tackle the complex area of API testing, due to the lack of tools on the market that were compliant with the modern Web. Existing tools, such as Postman, don’t support HTTPS(HTTP/2) or
Websockets.
Most APIs are developed by businesses to share their data with a larger audience, applications such as news distribution Sites, weather Sites, mapping applications, & many others, are built to either provide information to 3rd party developers who want to build on top of their data, or to the public, in general, who want to integrate data with existing 3rd party tools .
Examples would include:
1. A developer wanting to add custom location points to a mapping application, such as Google
Maps, for instance to offer clients the location of ice cream vendors in a particular area.
2. A dentist’s appointment list, which could be used by clients to integrate into appointment
reminder tools on their device, or on the web, such as Google Calendar.
APIs must be developed to conform to certain standards set down by either the coding environment, or the response format, selected. Basically, what happens, in layman’s terms, is that a request is sent by a 3rd party tool, and the API responds, usually in Json or XML, so that the 3rd party can easily understand and use the data in their own application.
Building an API is fraught with difficulty on many levels, and that’s where Swell, comes in. The dashboard tool, currently available as a download for Mac or Windows(Linux support, coming soon), allows developers to test their request-response code to see if everything works as planned. Multiple simultaneous connections are possible with Swell’s tools, & modern formats such as Websockets (usually used for IOT(Internet of Things, applications ) & HTTPS(encrypted, compressed data from websites) are actively supported.
– This is a startup profile based on publicly available material & not a review –
Image Credit: Swell
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