Your First Custom API: From a Function to a Live Endpoint

Intro

0:00 A TypeScript function becomes a live API : no project to scaffold, no routes, no build, no deploy. In this video, a first custom API of Calm Home, from an empty dialog to a call.

The first endpoint, the usual way

0:13 The first endpoint usually waits for a project, its routes and its controllers, a driver for each database and its connection strings, a Dockerfile and a pipeline, and docs written somewhere else. With API Maker, one dialog : settings, code and docs, g reaches every database, typed, Save, and the API is live, with its docs next to its code. In this video : the Custom API page, settings as code, languages and runtimes, code with completion, save and call, and versions.

The Custom API page

0:47 On the dashboard, Custom API. Calm Home has three already. The menu, Expand All : a tree of folders, by path, each API with its method, its access, its versions and its timeout.

Settings as code

1:02 Add : the dialog has three tabs, Basic Info, Code and Docs. The settings are code too : the name, Top Customers, the path, the method GET, who may call it, a timeout of five seconds, and the list of its errors. They are typed, so the editor completes every key.

Languages and runtimes

1:21 The Code tab. Eight languages : TypeScript, Python, PHP, C sharp, Go, Rust, Java and Kotlin. And for TypeScript, a runtime : Node.js or Bun. TypeScript on Node.js here.

Code with completion

1:37 Top Customers reads the orders in MySQL, with their customer in PostgreSQL. g holds everything : the request, the response, the databases. At instance, the editor lists the six instances of the account. Then their databases, and the tables of sales. In deep, the columns of orders, and on an order, its fields, from the schema. The rest groups the orders by customer, sums what each one spent, and returns the top five.

2:06 Every name was offered by the editor : nothing was guessed. The Docs tab : a line on what it does, and its query param. The docs stay with the API, and API Testing shows them.

Save and call

2:20 Save. Top Customers is live : no build, no restart. The page also has a grid : the method, the path, the language, the access, and a Docs mark on the one which has docs. Test API opens it in API Testing, with the headers an application sends. Send : the first call takes longer, it loads the new code. Again : faster. The table view : Priya Sharma, of Mumbai, first.

2:48 And the Logs tab : the line g.logger wrote, one hundred and thirty eight orders read.

Versions

2:55 Code changes without breaking callers. The Code tab, and its versions. A new version, minor, named By order count. Saved, next to Original. It ranks by the number of orders. Save Code, Make Active : callers get it at once. Hugo Bernard is first now, with five orders. A wrong idea? Pick Original, Make Active, and callers are back on the first version, Priya Sharma first. Every version is kept, as a file of the account in Git.

How fast, how much

3:29 Back on the Custom API page, once the APIs ran for a while, each one shows how it does: its average time, green while it is fast, amber or red once its average or its p95 is slow, its calls over the day, and the size of its answers. A folder adds its APIs up. One click opens the details of Top Customers. And the grid view sorts by speed, the slowest first.

3:57 Nothing to set up : it starts with the first call.

Good to know

4:01 Token access asks for the token of an API user or of a person ; a public API asks for nothing. Video twenty four is about access. The timeout stops a call which runs too long. And the error list names the errors an API can answer : the next video.

Built on standards

4:20 Every custom API has the same shape : settings, code and docs. g is the same in every language, so the code reads the same, written by a person or an AI assistant. And save is deploy : the same code runs on every server which pulls it.

Recap

4:38 To sum up. Settings, code and docs in one dialog. Eight languages, and every table completed by the editor. Save, and the API is live. Versions, switched in a click. Next : standard code, standard errors, and a bug fixed in seconds. API Maker. Build faster, spend smarter, deliver better.