Weâve all been there. Youâre tasked with building a customer dashboard or integration that pulls data from three totally different APIsâone for CRM data, another for eCommerce orders, and a third for support tickets. Each one structured differently. Auth handled differently. Formats? All over the place.
What should be a simple integration quickly turns into a spaghetti nightmare of fetch calls, transformation scripts, retries, and error handling hacks.
Been there. Done that. Never again.
This time, I used Martini, Lontiâs low-code-but-dev-friendly platform. And for once, the integration didnât make me want to flip a table.
Let me walk you through what I builtâand more importantly, how I built it.
đ The Challenge: Disjointed APIs, Disconnected Data
My goal was to create a single endpoint that returned a unified customer profile, complete with recent orders and any active support tickets. The kind of thing your front-end or reporting team loves.
But the systems involved?
- A CRM API (REST, fairly clean)
- An eCommerce system (also REST, less clean)
- A support platform (yep, SOAP via WSDL đ )
Normally this would be a slog. But in Martini, I was able to stitch these together visually, with full flexibility under the hood.
đ§± Step One: Connect to All Three APIs
Martiniâs Consume API wizard handled the API setup. I imported the OpenAPI docs for the CRM and eCommerce systems, and uploaded the WSDL for the support tool.
Martini auto-generated services for every endpointâmeaning I didnât have to manually wire anything. Each service became a reusable block I could drop into a workflow later.
đ§ Step Two: Build the Workflow Visually
With the services ready, I jumped into Martiniâs workflow builderâa low-code visual editor that actually respects developer needs.
- First, I fetched the customer data from the CRM.
- Then I pulled in the order history from the eCommerce API.
- Finally, I added a conditional branch that called the support API only if certain criteria were met.
No special syntax, no âworkflow scripting languageââjust visual logic. And when I needed to add a custom transformation? I just injected a quick Groovy snippet.
đ§č Step Three: Normalize the Response
This part usually sucksâtrying to mash together three different response shapes into one consistent format. But Martiniâs response modeler and mapping tools made it simple.
I created a structure like:
{
"customer": { ... },
"orders": [ ... ],
"supportTickets": [ ... ]
}
Then I mapped the fields from each service call into the unified structure, transforming and flattening where needed.
đ Step Four: Publish as a Unified API
Once the workflow was ready, I clicked âPublishâ andâboomâMartini turned it into a RESTful API, complete with OpenAPI docs and OAuth2 auth. Just like that, I had a single endpoint that wrapped multiple services, handled conditional logic, and gave consumers a clean, predictable response.
No gateway configs. No DevOps rabbit hole. Just one platform doing what it should.
đĄ Why This Matters
Iâve stitched together enough APIs over the years to know that most âintegration toolsâ fall apart when real complexity shows up. What set Martini apart?
- Itâs low-code, but not limiting. You can drop into code when needed.
- It handles API orchestration nativelyâno third-party glue required.
- You get built-in observability and version control out of the box.
- Most importantly, it made this project not only fastâbut sustainable.
This wasnât just a demo. Itâs a production-ready approach Iâll use again.
â TL;DR
You donât need to choose between speed and control. You donât need to write 500 lines of glue code just to call a few APIs. And you donât need to fear SOAP anymore (well, not as much).
Martini let me turn a chaotic 3-API integration into a single, clean endpointâin a fraction of the time.
Original source: Combining Multiple APIs Into a Unified Service Using Martini
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