How I Optimized An API Endpoint To Make It 10x Faster (2024)

When it comes to building web applications, performance is one of the most important factors to consider. If your application is slow, users will quickly become frustrated and may even stop using it. In this blog post, I’ll share the steps I took to optimize an API endpoint for an e-commerce web application and make it 10x faster.

This particular API endpoint was responsible for generating a report by collecting data from various sources, combining it, and performing calculations. It required communication with multiple modules or services to gather the necessary information.

Here are the steps I took to optimize it for 10x Performance.

Step 1: Identify the bottlenecks in the system:

The first step in optimizing an API endpoint is to identify the slowest parts of the code. This can be done by using performance profiling tools such as the Node.js debug module or performance API, or by manually measuring the execution times of different method calls. In my case, the bottlenecks were:

• Calling the database from a loop
• Calling an external service multiple times
• Executing a complex calculation multiple times with identical parameters.