How to Integrate Third-Party APIs in a MERN Stack Application

Today’s users are tech savvy, and as the world becomes increasingly digitized, high-performing applications are needed to meet their expectations. MERN stack, which is a combination of MongoDB, Express.js, Node.js, and React, has become one of the most popular frameworks for full-stack web development. It uses cutting-edge programming tools and interfaces to create robust web applications. However, developers often need to integrate real-time data, third-party applications, and additional functionalities into MERN stack application for added benefits.

Developers add Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to enable applications to communicate with the outside world and exchange information seamlessly. Imagine you want to receive real-time data from a third party service, or input some information into cloud services, then you would require API integration services to perform the task hassle-free. The question, however, is how to do this integration and manage it well within the MERN stack development process.

The Role of API Integration in MERN Stack Applications 

With API integration, developers can customize the web application and make it more functional. By integrating external APIs into your MERN stack development process, you can get access to a wide range of services like: 

1. Real-time Data Updates: When you get APIs onboard in a particular application, like getting sports updates, or real-time weather data, live stock market data, you can provide your users with real-time information for a more enjoyable experience. 
2. Third-party Authentication: APIs allow you to connect to highly secured sign-in services such as Google, Facebook, and Instagram. This makes your users feel safe to sign in and give control of their personal resources within the application. 
3. Cloud-services Integration: Using popular APIs from cloud service providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, you can integrate high in demand features into your app, including machine learning, file storage and serverless computing. 
4. Payment Processing: In most of the e-commerce applications, there is a need to integrate payment APIs from popular payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Payoneer. The MERN stack simplifies secure integration, enabling users to complete purchases seamlessly.

Backend API Integration 

The first step in integrating an API into your MERN stack application is to set up a robust backend using the most versatile Node.js and Express.js frameworks. This will serve as the core part of your application holding most of the integration logic of the API. This backend part sources API information, analyzes the data and transmits the results to the front end effortlessly. 

However, the detailed process is: 

1) Setting Up Express Routes for API Requests: Express.js is a framework in the MERN stack, which is utilized to set up routes that can handle API requests in the MERN stack development process. For example, you can plan routes to fetch weather data, gather news, or send real-time user notifications.

Express routes may handle several functions- 

• • Handling API Requests: Express routes can handle API requests from the frontend efficiently. These requests could be sending the current weather information, or personal information for logging into the user account, etc. 
  • Making External API Calls: After handling the API request, Express can make an API call using its tools. Developers can manipulate and analyze the received API data before returning it to the front end.
  • Securing API Requests: Sometimes the data received from an external API is confidential and it needs to be handled securely. In such cases, the data is not made available to the users and is stored automatically in the backend. By managing API requests on the server side, there is an additional layer of security developed within your application. 

2) Handling API Keys Safely Using Environment Variables: One of the most important points of concern is SAFETY, while working with APIs. API keys often protect APIs, allowing access to them, and these keys must be further safeguarded. In Node.js, developers generally store these keys securely in environment variables. This step allows for an easy deployment of your application to production. Using the environment variables, the API keys are hidden from everyone except the server, thus minimizing the chances of security threats. 

3) Error Handling: Another significant concern while integrating APIs in MERN stack development is that APIs can sometimes behave unreliable, or they come with a limit of a certain number of requests an application can make to them within a timeframe. An API may restrict requests to 500 per day or a set number per second. Like only 100 requests in a second. Developers can use Express.js for efficient error handling and rate limiting to prevent application crashes from excess requests.

Frontend API Integration

After fetching and processing backend data via an API, React renders it on the front end. MERN components efficiently load data into React’s virtual DOM for seamless updates. However, for SEO-critical applications, Next.js enables server-side rendering.

NEXT.js helps React with its unique features like server-side rendering (SSR) and static site generation (SSG). 

• SSR renders pages server-side, sending full HTML to the client, boosting load speed, and enhancing SEO.
• SSG generates static HTML during development, ensuring faster loads and better SEO for rarely updated sites.

SSR and SSG make Next.js a performance-optimized framework that boosts SEO rankings. Contact us to hire Next.js developers. 

Storing API Data in MongoDB 

While API data should be timely, making frequent API requests can be costly, especially in the vase of rate limited APIs. MongoDB helps to overcome this challenge by caching API data, reducing the need for repeated requests. 

1) Caching API Data for Performance: Caching is basically a process of storing API data temporarily, like the regularly fetched data (weather, current news, etc), can be fetched without having to call the API next time. 

• This feature of MongoDB further improves the loading speed of programs, while avoiding the maximum API limits. For example, in an e-commerce application, MongoDB can temporarily store product/service information, reducing the number of API requests and improving the speed on the user side.

2) Storing User Data: MongoDB can store user data like products in the shopping cart, or transaction logs to allow applications to give a personalized user experience regardless of how long the user has been inactive. 

Contact us to hire MERN Stack developers.

Leveraging the Combination of Next.js with MERN Stack 

Integrating Next.js with the MERN stack enhances business applications, ensuring high performance and scalability. Whether for e-commerce, content-heavy sites, or real-time apps, Next.js adds flexibility and efficiency.

1. Server-side Rendering (SSR) in Next.js allows you to carry out pre-rendering on the server-side for better first impressions and better search engine rankings. This is particularly helpful for websites that contain HD videos, images, blogs, or have data that needs a change frequently. 
2. Static Site Generation (SSG) in Next.js boosts performance by pre-generating static HTML, enabling instant page loads. This is particularly useful for pages that need rare changes like a company’s product portfolio or marketing pages. 
3. Next.js also enables you to create API routes inside the application, which makes the development easier. 
4. Next.js’s Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) updates static pages in real-time without rebuilding the entire site.

Contact our company to learn more about integrating third-party APIs in a MERN stack app. 

Conclusion 

APIs when integrated within the MERN stack application, give developers a free hand to experiment with web applications. MERN combines MongoDB, Express.js, React, and Node.js to efficiently handle data storage, manipulation, and related tasks.

Incorporating Next.js into the MERN stack development process adds more value to your developed app as you can leverage its SSR, and SSG features in the development process. 

However, many businesses don’t have the right guidance on how to integrate third-party APIs in a MERN Stack application. For them, it becomes essential to join hands with a MERN stack development company that provides experts in MERN stack development as well as Next.js development. Most of the companies also have access to the most advanced tools and technologies, which you may not have otherwise. 

Contact us if you are looking for a genuine software development company for your next project.