Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are now used by most software development teams to simplify communication between disconnected components from different platforms. APIs improve the performance of modern applications and impact the end-user experience. To keep them performing smoothly, API monitoring is required. 

It is important to include a monitoring step in the API lifecycle to ensure that the API is always running as planned. What exactly is API monitoring and why is it important? Check out these metrics and best practices.

Understanding API Monitoring

API monitoring is the practice of continuously verifying the availability of API endpoints and monitoring the correctness of transactions that occur there. In addition, with API monitoring users can gain knowledge about API performance especially in terms of response time to requests, queries, each of which has a different level of complexity. 

Why is API Monitoring Important?

Basically, API monitoring helps detect failed or late API transactions before end-users (usually consumers) report them. In addition, other benefits of API monitoring are:

1. Ensuring Successful Multi-Step Transactions on APIs

APIs are used in modern web applications to create an abstract layer between the microservices that make up the program. This architecture requires that the system depends on complex multi-step API interactions and integrations with third parties. 

For example, if the payment gateway integration in an e-commerce application fails, the store will lose customers and therefore revenue. Therefore, continuous API monitoring will save the company from this kind of problem and ensure success at every step of the transaction. 

2. Data Response Validation and Error Handling

API monitoring can be used to assess the reliability of API transactions. It can help its users to detect and send notifications in case of errors, warnings, or failed authentications. That way, the data flow is guaranteed to be safe. 

3. Identifying Endpoint Changes and Bugs from Third Party Integrations

Almost all SaaS providers make APIs available to developers, which can be used to handle preparation, data, and output. As a company grows, the API endpoint schema needs to be updated to reflect the changes. As a result, when endpoints are used in applications, they must be verified frequently to guarantee that the code does not fail when new schemas are released.

API timeouts, latency in API calls, failures, and downtime for API endpoints that rely on third-party integrations can significantly degrade API performance. Fortunately, API monitoring can help identify and resolve the above issues in real-time, serving as a tool that can effectively and efficiently optimize across services within a company or project. 

API Metrics to Monitor

Here are some metrics in APIs that are very important to monitor:

1. Availability or Uptime

API uptime is measured in percentage or in some cases as downtime per year as an overall average. 

2. CPU and Memory Usage

High CPU and memory utilization on the API host server may indicate an overload on virtual machines, containers, or API gateway nodes, which risks delaying API performance. The cluster-wide CPU utilization that hosts the CPU load or API code, as well as the number of processes waiting to execute, can be monitored. Memory can be measured as the proportion of accessible memory used.

3. API consumption

API consumption is measured in requests per minute. requests per second, queries per second. API consumption also has an effect on performance. 

4. API Response Time

As the name implies, API response time is a measurement of the time it takes for an API endpoint to provide a response. This is a difficult indicator to monitor when using third-party APIs as latency may be caused by extremely slow endpoints and network issues. 

5. Error Rate

This is a measure that represents the number of errors that occur in the API per minute or second to provide proper insight in tracking down issues in a particular API endpoint. Tracking HTTP status codes between 400 and 500, for example, may indicate a problem at the endpoint. 

6. API Unique Consumers

Unique APPI Consumer is an API metric that helps the team gain insight into the overall growth and retention of new client acquisition based on the number of monthly active API users. A drastic drop in these numbers during busy operating hours may indicate a problem in the application platform. 

API Monitoring Best Practices

The following are some key principles or best practices to keep in mind when conducting API monitoring:

  • Test in multiple user locations to get accurate and reliable results.
  • Regularly monitor enterprise application services for uptime with active checks. This will help companies generate accurate uptime and response time data. 
  • Always set up conditions or check returned data to validate that the response content is what the company expects, while triggering appropriate alerts. 
  • Always check the company’s production endpoints with the same security level as the end users, so as to get reliable and accurate results. 
  • For monitoring that has to do with latency, always check the spread statistically, not just an average to form an opinion. 
  • Always set up alerts for failures and issues, such as email, Slack alerts, and so on. 
  • Always double check Error 4xx, as this is often overlooked as an issue on the client side. Whereas in the API, Error 4xx may occur due to security issues or misconfiguration of validation checks. 
  • Set specific goals and key performance indicators that align with business objectives. Then update these goals as the company’s business objectives change. 
  • Keep detailed logs for audit, compliance, and post-incident analysis. 
  • Integrate API monitoring into DevOps processes for continuous testing and early problem detection, to avoid further issues. 

API monitoring seems like a complicated and arduous task, often even considered a good step to take, but not an essential step in API development. Yet consistent API monitoring can result in significantly improved API performance, error handling, and company and customer satisfaction. 

So, make sure API monitoring runs well using a quality service, such as Netmonk. With its flagship product, Netmonk Prime, which has been used by more than 15 large companies in Indonesia, Netmonk presents API monitoring, network monitoring, and server monitoring in one application! Just visit the Netmonk web for more information.