6 Common API Patterns Every Developer Should Master

Just while taking a break, I came across a great animated GIF and decided to share it.

The GIF contains six short animations that summarize the most common API patterns we encounter in daily development.

GIF source: https://twitter.com/AmigosCode/status/1701563810300006661

The six API patterns are:

gRPC : a high‑performance, cross‑language, easily extensible remote procedure call (RPC) framework used for communication between distributed systems, widely adopted in microservice architectures.

SOAP : an older data‑exchange protocol for web services that uses strict standards and XML‑based messages; it is less common in new systems.

GraphQL : an innovative architecture open‑sourced by Facebook that lets clients request only the data they need, reducing over‑fetching.

WebHook : a passive real‑time communication mechanism where an application sends an HTTP POST to a predefined URL to notify and trigger actions in another system.

REST : an architectural style for designing network applications, using standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) to operate on resources.

WebSocket : a protocol that enables bidirectional real‑time communication over a single long‑lived connection, ideal for low‑latency updates such as chat, push notifications, and games.

For gRPC, GraphQL, and REST, short video introductions are also available; if the GIF is unclear, those videos can help.