Comment by Ovidiu Bădiță on "Should I make 3rd party API calls from my frontend or the backend?"

CommentShould I make 3rd party API calls from my frontend or the backend?

Ovidiu Bădiță

Mar 7, 2017

It is all about what your need is at the moment. If you access a public API, and you do not need to keep any records about user interaction with that API, you can just dump it on the client side and save up on server load. For example, if you want to put some Twitter feed in your UI, I see no reason to route this on your server, unless you want to filter that feed in some way.

If the API you call requires tinkering with the response or a special kind of request, then it belongs on the server.

Ankit Singhaniya

Full Stack Developer

Mar 7, 2017

is it advicable to have both types?

Ovidiu Bădiță

Mar 7, 2017

I see no reason to form a policy about this. Your code needs to be SOLID. If it is, it will be easy to decide where a feature should be. Also, code needs to be simple. If you put those calls on back-end, you increase the complexity of your project, because your server becomes a glorified router. Your frontend should not care about your server. And it should be able to call any resource it needs using the right endpoint. As long as the API provides all the data as you need it, and it needs not further validation and you trust the API you call, is okay to just use that API.

On the other hand, if performance is not a problem, and you already have a service that abstracts away API calls and validation on the server, for consistency I would use that. Consistency is good and it makes things easier to understand for new people joining the project. But I do not think it is a must, in this case.

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