Engineering
Exploring Software Utility Services
What are software utility services, why developers like to use them, and all the utility services ApyHub has to offer
NI
Niels van Rikxoort
Last updated on October 06, 2022
What are software utility services
Applications need core utilities over and again across various modules. These core utilities are essential across the application and provide complex business capabilities. However, creating a utility from the ground up and maintaining it to meet changing domain and business requirements can take you (as a developer) away from your core business and application goals.
That’s where ‘Software Utility Services’ come in. They provide lean utility services that deliver all the functionality you need and more, with a simple API call.
Why developers like to use software utility services
By using Software Utility Services, you ensure that your core stack is built up of only those services that are central to your business vision.
The applications of the future are completely cloud-hosted and are built on an API-first architecture. This lets you deliver applications that keep up with the demands of users and keep your stack as lean and flexible as possible.
ApyHub: Utilities for all your tasks
With ApyHub, a whole range of utilities are only an API call away. We do all the heavy-lifting and processing, all you have to do is plug-in and use the accurate data that we provide. Our utility services are powerful, robust, and provide comprehensive responses that let you be as flexible with the implementation as possible.
So what do our utility services really help you do? Think for example that you were building a website, and part of it required code that would provide a list of calling codes for all countries. If you were to build this functionality from scratch, you would have to spend time and resources presenting data in the right format, and manually track any and all changes made to calling codes.
A utility service such as ApyHub’s Country Calling Codes can help you automate this process, freeing you up to focus on your applications core capabilities.
Here’s some of the categories of Software Utility Services we offer at ApyHub, and a short explanation of what they do:
| ApyHub Utility Categories | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| File Conversion | Compress, archive, or convert from one file format to another | HTML to PDFs, URLs to PDFs, JSON to CSV etc. |
| File Manipulation | Manipulate all sort of files to meet the needs of your application | Encrypt, merge, split PDF files etc. |
| Data Validation | Validate different inputs inside an application, for example phone numbers, business vat numbers, post codes etc. | Phone Number validation, IBAN validator |
| Image Processing | Compress images, generate thumbnails, and extract metadata | Watermark images, take screenshots etc. |
| E-commerce Quick Tools | Super category including services that can be used in apps that have a strong ecommerce element | EU VAT rates, US Sales tax, generate invoices etc. |
| Smart Generation | Services that generate useful functional tools for your application | Wordcloud, QR code generation, iCal, etc |
| Data Extraction | Extract data or elements from various inputs | Webscrapers, PDF text extractors, webpage screenshot etc |
| Web Manipulation | Services for anything web related including urls etc. | Link preview |
| Data Visualization | Services that help you visualize useful data in your application | Country calling codes, user agent detection etc. |
Want to explore ApyHub’s extensive and growing list of software utility services? Check out the entire list here.
Photo by Desola Lanre-Ologun on Unsplash.