NZ Expertise

REST APIs built around the way your business works.

The backbone of your software deserves as much care as the part your customers see.

APIs sit behind customer portals, mobile apps, partner integrations, and internal platforms. This is where the business rules live. It is also where sensitive data moves between systems, so the details matter.

We design and build REST APIs around the way your business actually works. It could be a new platform, a partner integration, a service for a mobile app, or a sensible layer in front of the legacy system nobody is quite ready to switch off.

Some of the APIs we build are small machine-to-machine services. Others coordinate payments, documents, customer records, and years of business rules. We use Laravel and NestJS a lot because we know them well. If another stack makes more sense, we'll use that.

Want to talk it through? Call Alex, our Technical Director. He's one of the people who will actually design and build your API.

Call Alex on 022 020 8262

Good APIs do more than move JSON from A to B.

Writing an endpoint is easy. The harder bit is deciding who can call it, what happens when a request is repeated, and how the system behaves when a third-party service has a wobble at exactly the wrong moment.

We sort out the data contract, authentication, access control, webhooks, background work, audit trails, and monitoring. The documentation should make sense to another developer without them having to book a seance. Then there are the integrations with payment gateways, CRMs, accounting platforms, email, cloud storage, and whatever industry-specific system the business already relies on.

REST is normally our starting point. It is well understood and works brilliantly for integrations. GraphQL earns its place when a product needs flexible access to connected data. We can build the schema and resolvers, then handle the client queries, caching, and generated types too.

If there is already an API in place, we can extend it, document it, or replace the risky bits in stages. We are not going to prescribe a rewrite before we understand why the current system is causing trouble.

A fast API starts with a database that isn't fighting it.

We really like databases. A well-designed PostgreSQL or MySQL database models the business properly and protects its data with useful constraints. It also keeps the everyday queries fast without filling the application with clever workarounds.

We design schemas, relationships, indexes, transactions, and migration paths around the way the data is actually used. When an API is slow, we look at its query plans. Missing indexes, N+1 queries, over-fetching, locks, bad pagination, and the query that was fine until the table reached ten million rows are all familiar territory.

A slow API does not automatically need Redis thrown at it. Quite often the query or index is the problem. We measure it, fix the thing that is actually slow, and only add caching or background work when it helps.

The complicated stuff is where we earn our keep.

At one insurer, the REST APIs coordinate quotes, policies, claims, payments, documents, and reporting across customer, broker, and internal systems. OAuth2 and role-based access protect the sensitive parts. Queues and events stop the slower work from holding up every request.

A training and commerce platform we built handles bookings, payments, orders, approvals, single sign-on, partner API keys, and signed webhooks. Requests can be retried without creating duplicate orders. If an integration goes offline, a durable event outbox keeps the work around until it can be delivered.

We also built a focused REST API for an electrical manufacturer to manage software entitlements and allocation. It uses machine-to-machine tokens, expiry rules, and IP allowlisting. The response contract is documented in OpenAPI, so the team consuming it knows exactly what to expect.

Because 'it worked in Postman' is not a launch strategy.

Someone else will have to build against the API, so its contract needs the same care as the code behind it. Responses should be consistent. Errors should be useful. REST gets OpenAPI documentation, while GraphQL gets a schema that stays close to the code.

Automated tests cover the obvious cases and the awkward ones, including the payment provider timing out halfway through. Health checks, structured logs, and error monitoring give us somewhere useful to look when production disagrees with the test suite.

We can handle the architecture, build, launch, and ongoing work. You talk directly to the people writing the software, rather than sending every question through three layers of project management.

API development questions.

We build public, partner, and internal REST APIs, along with machine-to-machine services. We also build GraphQL on both sides. That covers schemas and resolvers on the server, then queries, caching, and generated types in the client. Laravel and NestJS are two stacks we know particularly well. The right choice still depends on the job.

Yes. We can document or extend what is there, replace the risky bits in stages, or put a clean layer in front of a legacy system. Most businesses cannot stop everything for a ground-up rebuild, and usually do not need to.

Yes. We work with both every day. That covers data modelling and migrations as well as indexes, transactions, query plans, and slow-query work. If an API has become sluggish as the data has grown, we can work out why.

We decide the security model based on who is using the API and what it exposes. Depending on the job, that can involve OAuth2, scoped API keys, permissions, rate limits, signed webhooks, and audit trails. REST work normally includes OpenAPI documentation. GraphQL gets a clear schema and documented operations. Automated tests cover authentication, business rules, and failure cases.

Got systems that need to talk?

Let's design the API between them.

Tell us what you're building, which systems it needs to work with, and where the current API is causing trouble. We'll ask a few questions and work out a practical way forward.

Call us, or use the form - we promise not to open with a lecture about microservices.

Phone: 09 929 1216