It’s been a big year for Tyk. We made awesome improvements to our open source API Gateway, spread the word of Tyk all over the world, and got through enough space-related Dad jokes to fill a box of Christmas crackers.
It’s been a big year for the API Community too – we’ve seen the first ever API Days in Asia, Service Mesh dominating the headlines, and a multitude of kick-ass contributions from the Tyk community. We’ve never been so excited about the opportunities out there to connect every system in the world.
And, whilst we’re extremely proud of our own achievements, we can take only 5, 10, ok, maybe 15% of the credit. It’s you that have played the most important part of all – whether it’s code contributions, community blog posts, or new features: without your projects, Tyk wouldn’t be much use. So a huge thank you to everyone playing their part to kick down the barriers to API adoption.
With this in mind, we’ve dusted off the podium and polished the medals. That’s right: it’s time for another round of the Tyk Community Awards. Read on for our best contributions of 2019.
Celebrating our community, one city at a time.
Let’s face it: our community awards wouldn’t be much of a celebration if we didn’t get out there and actually celebrate with some of you. Getting to know your projects, passions, and, frankly, pain points, is one of the most satisfying parts of our jobs. And sharing our knowledge wherever we can, means that you can focus on the business of building finely-tuned engineering.
Last year we made it to 12 cities across 8 different countries, primarily across Europe and Asia Pacific. But this year, we’re going bigger than ever before.
That’s right. This year: Tyk’s going Stateside.
In what’s possibly the most hotly-anticipated British invasion since The Beatles, Tyk will be touching down in cities across the USA and Canada in our upcoming community tour.
We’ll be hitting the road, taking our free API workshops, Surgery and talks along with us, and speaking at a host of API meet-ups and conferences on the way. Got an event you’d like us to appear at? Drop us a line.
The class of 2019 winners are…
Logz.io: Integration with Tyk Pump
Over the past year, logz.io has contributed to API acceleration by building a powerful integration with Tyk Pump. Tyk Pump is a pluggable request analytics aggregator and shipper, which can be used to send API analytics to a multitude of other added-value tools, like Logz.io.
Logz.io built a new integration with Tyk pump that enables users to send analytics direct from Tyk to Logz.io, without needing intermediary tooling (essentially, reformatting), in a third-party tool.
After Logz.io’s hard work building and testing, Tyk Pump can now ship request analytic logs direct to Logz.io, which also transforms the logs from the Tyk format into the Logz.io format. This native integration has helped the API community to drive efficiency, speed up workflow and simplify this process for users moving forward.
Pretty cool right? To see how it’s done, and download for free, head to their Github.
“I’m happy to be part of this collaboration between two great open source solutions,” Says Ido at Logz.io. “This will help both communities and strengthen the integration between them.”.
Thank you to Ido, Daniel and the rest of the team at Logz.io for this awesome contribution, making it easy to ship request analytics direct to Logz.io.
Bitsofinfo: Community Contributions
Bitsofinfo has been a regular, valued and active contributor to the Tyk community, ever since they starting using Tyk in 2017.
Since then, they’ve created over 50 topics in our Tyk community forum, generated hundreds of helpful posts and provided lots of hints, tips and improvements to Tyk and the API community. It’s safe to say that Bitsofinfo consistently goes the extra mile to improve API Adoption across our open source community.
We’d like to thank Bitsofinfo for their continued wide range of contributions and commitment to the API Community: long may it continue!
If you’d like to learn more about the improvements and contributions made, take a look at Bitsofinfo’s GitHub page to see more of their activity, projects and comments.
Jamie Tanna & Stephen Galbraith: Unit Testing
As part of a side-project in their free time, Jamie and Stephen posted an awesome blog, unit test and reviewing Tyk (TYKJS) Middleware in an effort to improve Tyk’s open source offering.
The guys went into great detail, testing each component of a software stack with a fine-tooth comb to see exactly where potential weaknesses were so that relevant improvements could be made.
By posting this test and sharing knowledge, Jamie and Stephen have helped the API community learn more about the component and testing processes. They’ve also directly improved our API Gateway and middleware offering.
“I’m really impressed with Tyk as an application” – Jamie explains. “It’s fast, straightforward, lightweight and easy to extend with middleware. It makes running your own API Gateway so much easier, so you can focus on delivering APIs!”
We want to thank both Jamie and Stephen for this contribution to API Adoption and the wider API community. You can read their blog here.
Postman: API Education & Efficiency
Postman is an invaluable tool in the API community’s arsenal, helping API owners design, develop, and test their APIs.
You could say we use Postman right at the beginning of the API lifecycle – that is, for a variety of API education tasks. From helping to train our internal team members on the nuts and bolts of Tyk, to showing API newbies the basics of API management at one of our Surgeries – Postman’s mock data bring our examples to life.
For those deeper into their API journey, Postman’s mock data also allows extensive testing and tweaking of their API. When Tyk users have a problem with an API, we ask them to send Postman collection for us to run and review, helping us understand the issues better and troubleshoot quickly.
‘It’s no longer just developers working with APIs. While Postman initially started as a developer-first tool, we’ve seen tremendous adoption by all sorts of people who aren’t considered traditional developers.
We hear about organisations using the app to prototype solutions, demo tech for partners, and onboard members of their own teams. All of this enables the API community to be defined more broadly and makes APIs more accessible for everyone.’
Thank you to everyone at Postman for making API design and adoption much easier, for us and for the whole API community.
Follow Postman on Twitter for their latest news, updates and support. You can also join their community forum to ask those much-needed questions and join in discussions with the wider Postman community.
Velvet Consulting: API Education in France
As a Tyk partner, Velvet Consulting support engineers (using Tyk or otherwise), to create ambitious API programmes. Whether it’s PoCs, project planning, or installation and configuration, they work hard to bulldoze many of the barriers to API adoption.
In addition, though, Velvet Consulting use their resources and expertise to provide huge amounts of added value to the API community. From community events and talks to blog posts, their content is focused on helping the tech community approach innovation, especially around open data. All this and more has helped accelerate many projects to benefit the wider API community.
A huge merci beaucoup to Jérémie and the rest of Velvet Consulting for your continued efforts to improve API Adoption and helping the tech community get to grips with API Management. Follow Velvet on Twitter for details on their latest news, events and updates.
Congratulations winners: your swag bag is on the way
Congratulations to all our winners! As well as being able to bask in the smug and superior glow that goes hand-in-hand with reaching such dizzying heights, all winning contributions will be receiving some special Tyk swag along with your custom Tyk mascot artwork.
Be part of our community
These awards are part of celebrating our whole community, so we don’t want to stop with honouring just five contributions. We also want to ensure we keep contributing back ourselves, by collaborating with all of you.
So, to honour our continued commitment to our community, Tyk’s going back on tour! But this year, we’re going bigger! We’re announcing an extended series of worldwide API community events, API Surgeries, and deep-dive sessions, around the world, and online too.
This whole community tour is to help increase API education, bringing API experts together so they can meet, and, most importantly, letting us speak to as many of you as possible! After all, our mission is to connect every system in the world: we couldn’t achieve that without connecting you to you too.
Want a chance to be considered a winner in the future? Get involved
Like the sound of being recognised for your contributions to API Acceleration? It’s simple – get involved, and help us break down barriers to API Adoption.
Join our Community, or star us on Github. Once you’ve downloaded Tyk – have a play with it, try to break it – be our guest. And, when you’re ready to get more involved, steam ahead: whether it’s through code contributions, joining our research panel or bug bounty programme, guest blogging, creating Tyk explainer videos, or hosting a Tyk meet-up.
Help us spread the word about the power of APIs, and how easy it can be to create something cool with your APIs.
