Which application did you use a REST API to connect to for sourcing data?

When integrating with an external application via a REST API, the first step is to understand the API’s contract: the base URL, available endpoints, request methods, and required authentication. For example, if I connected to a CRM like Salesforce, I would use OAuth 2.0 to obtain an access token, then call the REST endpoints such as /services/data/vXX.0/sobjects/Contact to retrieve data. I would handle pagination by inspecting the ‘nextRecordsUrl’ field in the response and loop until all records are fetched. Error handling is crucial; I would check HTTP status codes and parse error messages to retry or log failures. Data transformation is often needed to map the JSON payload to my internal data model. Finally, I would schedule the integration using a cron job or a workflow engine, ensuring idempotency by using unique identifiers or timestamps to avoid duplicate records. This approach ensures reliable, secure, and maintainable data ingestion from the external application.