Intro

Hey everyone, exciting news from the tech trenches here at Realie! I'm thrilled to announce that after months of hard work from our brilliant dev team (and quite a few late-night Red Bulls), we've just launched the first version of our public API. 🚀

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking - "Just what the world needs, another API!" 😉 But hear me out: we've put a ton of thought and cutting-edge tech into making this API insanely fast and effortlessly scalable. 

How we built it

The API is built on serverless function infrastructure, which allows for automatic scaling of computing resources based on incoming request volume. This serverless architecture enables significant cost savings (passed onto you, our lovely customers), while also ensuring the API gracefully handles any traffic spikes without any service interruptions.

In terms of performance, we've been extremely impressed with the low-latency responses enabled by this architecture and thoughtful database tuning. During internal benchmarking, we consistently observed average response times in the 100-200ms range, even for complex geospatial queries. This snappy performance ensures a positive and timely experience for API consumers.

We've also implemented optimizations to mitigate cold starts, a common challenge with serverless architectures where unused function instances are deprovisioned to save resources. Through a combination of thoughtful architectural decisions and infrastructure tuning, we've achieved minimal cold start times. API clients can expect requests to be served by pre-warmed function instances in the vast majority of cases.

Final Thoughts

Of course, there's a ton more going on behind the scenes to keep this API purring. But I won't bore you with all the nerdy details (though if anyone wants to geek out about it, my Twitter DMs are always open @realie_alex). 

The important thing is this: we now have an API that's fast as blazes, effortlessly handles whatever you can throw at it, and is an absolute joy to work with. I personally have been having an absolute blast using it during our analytics page work (my next blog post topic).

To get started, head on over to our spiffy new API docs and snag your API key. As always, we can't wait to see what amazing things you all do with it, and reach out with any features you’d like us to add. Happy building! 🥳

Alex

Founder & CTO