The world of APIs is changing. For a long time, REST was the one-size-fits-all solution for web communication. However, as applications demand real-time updates, high performance microservices, and flexible data querying, REST isn't always the best tool for the job.As a modern API engineer, you need a versatile toolkit. You need to know when to use a WebSocket for a chat app, gRPC for internal microservices, or GraphQL for a complex mobile dashboard.Apidog is not just a REST Client. It is a comprehensive API platform that supports all these protocols natively.In this chapter, we will explore:
1.
GraphQL: Empowering clients to ask for exactly what they need.
WebSocket: Real-time, full-duplex communication channels.
4.
Socket.IO: The event-based successor to simple WebSockets, widely used in Node.js ecosystem.
5.
Server-Sent Events (SSE): Lightweight server-to-client streaming, the backbone of modern AI (LLM) responses.
6.
SOAP: Handling legacy enterprise web services that strictly require XML.
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to confidently debug and document APIs across any protocol using Apidog.Let's start your journey beyond REST with GraphQL.
