Tracking API changes is crucial for developers to ensure their applications continue functioning as expected. As APIs evolve, new versions introduce breaking changes that can cause integrations to break. Developers need visibility into API changes to identify potential issues before they impact users.
Why is Tracking API Changes Important?
Here are some key reasons tracking API changes is critical:
- Avoid integration errors – Changes to API inputs, outputs, or structures can easily break dependent apps. Tracking changes lets developers identify breaking updates before they reach users.
- Understand deprecation schedules – APIs often deprecate endpoints or features with a scheduled removal. Tracking deprecation timelines is essential to update apps before integrations break.
- Stay updated on new features – APIs constantly add new capabilities. Tracking API changes helps developers take advantage of new features and improvements.
- Monitor API stability – Frequent or substantial changes may indicate poor API stability. Tracking API changes helps assess API reliability over time.
- Comply with API terms of service – API providers often require consumers to integrate updated versions within a certain timeframe. Tracking changes helps developers comply with API terms.
Without tracking API changes, developers operate “in the dark”, unable to anticipate or respond to API changes that may break their apps. A proper change tracking strategy is essential for smooth API integrations.
How Can I Manually Track API Changes?
While automated API change monitoring tools provide the most effective approach, developers can also manually track API changes using the following strategies:
Review Documentation Updates
API documentation outlines available endpoints, request/response formats, parameters, and more. Review documentation periodically to identify new or altered API capabilities:
- Check changelog sections for recorded updates
- Compare old and new documentation versions side-by-side
- Sign up for provider notifications on new documentation releases
Documentation often lacks details on breaking changes. However, it can reveal new features to leverage in apps.
Execute Existing API Calls
Send actual API requests to see if responses change over time:
- Record snapshots of API request/response payloads over time
- Compare snapshots to identify structural changes
- Monitor response codes for unexpected errors indicating breaking changes
This approach requires maintaining a large archive of request/response snapshots to compare. It also only catches breaking changes once apps start malfunctioning, with limited visibility into upcoming changes.
Study Provider Notifications
Many API providers communicate upcoming changes through:
- Blog posts
- Status updates
- Email lists
- Social media channels
Regularly reviewing these information sources can reveal details on API changes before they are released. However, providers do not always effectively notify consumers of impactful API changes. Do not rely on provider notifications alone.
Check GitHub Repositories
If the API provider maintains code in a public GitHub repository, developers can review commit logs and pull requests to identify recent API changes:
- Scan commit messages for mentions of API changes
- Review pull requests modifying API implementation code
- Check for structural changes to request/response model definitions
This GitHub analysis provides code-level visibility into API changes. However, it requires familiarity with the codebase and is not feasible for all APIs.
Challenges with Manual API Change Tracking
While manual tracking provides some API change visibility, significant challenges remain:
- Time consuming – Comparing documentation versions, response snapshots, commit logs, and notifications demands heavy manual effort.
- Easy to miss changes – With so many sources to monitor, developers often overlook impactful API changes.
- Only detects breaking changes – Manual tracking primarily identifies breaking updates but lacks visibility into new features.
- Delayed awareness – Changes are often detected after being released, sometimes after they break apps.
- Incomplete information – Change context and migration guidance is limited across manual tracking methods.
Automated API monitoring and change management solutions overcome these challenges to provide complete, timely change visibility.
Automated API Change Monitoring
Automated tools continuously monitor APIs to detect and report on changes:
- Proactive change visibility – Upcoming changes are detected from development environments before release.
- Broader coverage – Tools analyze documentation, code, consumer usage data, and more to provide comprehensive change insights.
- Smart change classification – Machine learning identifies the scope and severity of API changes.
- Detailed change analysis – Full details on structural API changes, version mappings, deprecation info, and more are reported.
- Migration recommendations – Guidance on adapting apps to API changes helps accelerate update development.
- Configurable alerts – Set alerts to notify on impactful API changes and other criteria.
With automated API change intelligence, developers can proactively adapt their apps to stay aligned with API evolutions. Leading solutions like Postman API Analytics enable robust API change monitoring.
Getting Started with Postman API Analytics
Postman API Analytics provides comprehensive API change detection and analysis capabilities. Follow these steps to configure API change tracking:
1. Integrate Monitored APIs
The Postman agent can monitor APIs by:
- Capturing live API traffic from the application
- Sending synthetic transactions to replicate flows
- Connecting to a provider’s API portal
This provides data to analyze API changes against. Public and private APIs can be monitored.
2. Create an API Version
An initial API version is created on first detection to baseline its structure. As changes emerge, new API versions are automatically created to track evolutions.
3. Identify API Changes
As API traffic is monitored, structural differences between versions are detected as changes. Change details are categorized for assessment.
4. Assess Change Impacts
Machine learning evaluates changes across 150+ data points to determine the type, risk level, scope of impact, and other metadata to quantify change severity.
5. Gain Change Insights
Users gain deep insights into API changes including:
- Change log – All modifications listed chronologically
- Change comparison – Visual regression analysis of two API versions
- Endpoint analysis – Filterable list of changed endpoints
- Annotated schemas – Structural diffs highlighting version differences
These views provide detailed yet easy-to-understand overviews of how APIs are changing.
6. Configure Notifications
Alert policies can be customized to notify users via email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and more when specific API changes occur. For example, set alerts on new endpoints, deprecated operations, high risk changes, or other criteria.
7. Streamline Update Development
With continuous visibility into API changes, developers can rapidly adapt integrations to leverage new capabilities and avoid disruptions from breaking changes.
Key API Change Monitoring Capabilities
Robust API change intelligence platforms like Postman provide several key capabilities:
Change Risk Assessment
ML algorithms classify changes based on severity and scope of impact:
- High – Breaking changes affecting many consumers
- Medium – Non-breaking changes impacting some consumers
- Low – Minor enhancements with minimal impact
This highlights the most impactful API changes for prioritized mitigation.
Change Annotation
Detailed annotations on changed API schema elements highlight differences:
- Added – New request parameters or response fields
- Modified – Changes to data types, descriptions, or formatting
- Removed – Deleted API resources
Annotations provide code-level visibility into API changes without combing through documentation.
Customizable Alerting
Users can configure alerts for changes including:
- New endpoints
- Deprecated operations
- Added/removed request parameters
- Altered response codes
- Increasing API error rates
Teams can fine-tune alerts to notify on the API changes that matter most.
Change Migration Recommendations
For significant API changes, actionable guidance is provided on adapting integrations. This includes:
- Code snippets
- Parameter mapping guidance
- Endpoint replacement recommendations
Migration recommendations accelerate updating apps to work with API changes.
Historical Change Tracking
A complete record of API changes is maintained covering details like:
- Change summary
- Changed endpoints
- Associated PRs/commits
- Release dates
- Change comparisons
Historical change data helps inform strategy and monitor API stability over time.
Best Practices for API Change Management
To effectively manage API changes, leading practices include:
- Monitor actively and broadly – Utilize robust API change tracking to get early, comprehensive visibility.
- Assess change impacts – Understand the breadth and severity of changes to prioritize appropriately.
- Encourage provider communication – Engage providers for open dialog on upcoming changes and migration planning.
- Isolate change risks – Use strategies like API versioning to manage change independently across consumer groups.
- Automate monitoring – Configure alerting for proactive notifications on impactful changes.
- Build adaptable clients – Design integrations to gracefully handle API changes using techniques like defensive programming.
With rigorous API change tracking and management practices, developers can build smooth API integrations that evolve gracefully over time.
Conclusion
Tracking API changes is essential for managing the ongoing evolution of API-based applications. Manual monitoring techniques provide limited, reactive change visibility. Automated API analytics solutions like Postman provide comprehensive and proactive change tracking capabilities.
By implementing continuous API monitoring with Postman or comparable tools, developers can achieve robust API change control to prevent unexpected API changes from disrupting applications and users.
