API *

Wearable devices present a paradox: the band measures your heart rate, sleep, and activity, but the manufacturer doesn't provide a ready-made open API to integrate this data into third-party systems (like a home monitoring setup or a local database). The official Xiaomi Mi Fitness app shows beautiful graphs, but the data remains 'locked' within the mobile ecosystem.

The initial task was purely practical: to set up automatic collection of health data into a local SQLite database and display reports in a family Telegram bot. Since the band syncs with the app, which in turn syncs with the Xiaomi cloud, the data is guaranteed to be transmitted over the network. I needed to understand the format in which it's transmitted and how to retrieve it.

This article is a technical breakdown of the journey from analyzing network traffic and setting up trust for a custom CA to reverse-engineering Xiaomi's RC4 protocol, decrypting AES/CBC objects from FDS storage, and parsing the proprietary binary sleep format.

Accessing Claude from Russia might seem like a daunting task due to the service's regional restrictions. In this article, I will explain in detail how to register for the web version and API of Claude, what tools are needed to bypass the restrictions, and how to use the service safely in the future. This guide is based on personal experience and includes registration methods that are current as of late 2024 and have been tested in practice.

After searching Russian-language resources, I realized that there is very little practically useful information, or it might not account for changes in the service's operation. Ordinary users have to gather information piece by piece - from various YouTube videos, forums, or superficial articles.

Therefore, I decided to create an up-to-date guide based on my personal experience and knowledge, taking into account all the pitfalls that an inexperienced Claude user might encounter.

The Chinese neural network DeepSeek has recently gained popularity. Today, we'll figure out how to work with its API, how to pay for it from Russia, and whether there are any difficulties.

In today's digital world, where applications process increasing amounts of sensitive data, ensuring reliable user authentication is critical. Authentication is the process of verifying the identity of a user who is trying to access a system. A properly chosen authentication method protects data from unauthorized access, prevents fraud, and increases user confidence.

However, with the development of technology, new authentication methods are emerging, and choosing the optimal solution can be difficult. This article will help developers and business owners understand the variety of authentication approaches and make informed choices.

When we go abroad for vacation or meet a foreigner on the street who doesn’t speak Russian but is trying to ask, “Where is the restroom? How do I get to…”, we wonder how to explain things to them in Russian in a way they would understand.

I asked myself a similar question when trying to explain something to a colleague using SQL while they were working with Java. The main goal of my work was to create a quality test model. Without it, there would be no proper regression testing later on.

I started by building a framework filling it with test cases. We held a meeting where we discussed priority of positive and negative test cases briefly. When developing the test scenarios, I used the incremental model, but as practice showed, this approach also required an iterative method. For example, it is like having the outline of the Mona Lisa first, then adding colors, painting the background, and so on.

It’s better to maintain the checklist in Excel format to add columns, write notes, and more. And let’s not forget that, as we take on the role of Leonardo da Vinci, we use different colors and get creative.

I am a manager by profession specializating in Production Management. My motivator is the Theory of Constraints (TOC) methodology, which focuses on identifying and managing the key constraint of a system to determine the efficiency of the entire system as a whole:

So let’s talk about the word yes.  Another way to say it is that, we need to give some positive statements to make a sale. 

I said, in the last article that Russians and Eastern European people are much more reserved with giving the answer of yes. So in this culture, it is normal to wait to have more facts about what the work will be for giving a positive answer. But this creates real problem and an absolute block when it comes to selling your IT software and project development to western cultures!

Let’s break this down into understandable pieces. 

In today's fast-paced world of software development, integrating third-party APIs and services is a common practice. These integrations can enhance functionality, improve user experience, and provide additional features that would be time-consuming and costly to develop in-house. However, ensuring these integrations work seamlessly with your software is crucial, and this is where the importance of a test environment, or sandbox, comes into play.

A sandbox environment allows developers to test the integration between their software and third-party services without risking the stability and security of the production environment. This controlled setting enables thorough testing, helping to uncover issues before they affect end-users. By covering as many test cases as possible, developers can ensure robust and reliable integrations.

But what if your third-party provider, such as a bank or government e-system, does not offer a sandbox environment? This scenario can pose significant challenges, but there are several strategies you can employ to mitigate these issues.

This is a step-by-step research of a clear and intuitive approach to validate custom data in .NET applications with help of the Minimal API filters and the FlatValidator.

Hello Habr! My name is Nikita Letov. I am a tech lead of backend development in remote banking services for individuals (or retail department) of Rosbank. In this article I will describe what a point of entry to an app is, when it becomes vital, and how API Gateway can help you. We'll review a traditional blocking pattern based on Netflix Zuul 1.x gateway with all its problems of using, then reactive Spring Cloud Gateway and difficulties of moving to it. Finally, we'll compare these two approaches.

Trading robots are conquering the Wall Street! Learn how to create your first automated python trading bot.

We present a fully functioning trading bot pipeline on python using the Binance API. Starting with the general introduction, we provided a comprehensive overview of main API calls and their implementation on python. After this we show a fully functioning python code presenting a basic trading bot with core features using static channel breakout strategy.

Experience turbocharged API testing using Postman's AI-driven assistant. In this article, you will learn how to deploy a project using docker-compose, perform requests, and create tests utilizing artificial intelligence.

e-Learning is an extension of/ alternative to a traditional classroom setup. e-learning, commonly known as ‘online learning’ or ‘virtual learning’ is ideally a one-way or two-way digital communication established on a device with video and voice call integration using internet access. The last two years made us realize how technology can facilitate and improve communication. Digital technology had its impact in almost every industry including the sensitive education sector.

This tutorial will guide you step by step in building an Android chat app in Kotlin with the help of third-party messaging SDKs. The reason I chose Kotlin for this tutorial is that - it is a lightweight programming language suggested by Google for building apps that work on Android devices. 

In the steps ahead, I’ll show you how to develop an app in Android Studio, with messaging features that can integrate using SDKs. I use MirrorFly’s chat SDKs throughout this tutorial.

WebRTC integrations have emerged as a game-changer in the Video Calling Technology over the years. The protocol has redefined the way real-time video communications take Developers can integrate WebRTCs commonly available as JavaScript APIs to add audio and video solutions to their apps. place. Developers can integrate WebRTCs commonly available as JavaScript APIs to add audio and video solutions to their apps. This tutorial will take you through the steps in developing a two-way video call between two devices. 

WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a set of rules that can establish bidirectional and full-duplex communication between our two devices using JavaScript. It connects your devices and enables transfer of unlimited real-time audio and video across any operating system. However, the WebRTC agents created for both devices do not know any information about each other inorder to establish the media exchange. At this point, a third, mutually agreed-upon server is introduced. This server which connects the devices to transfer data with necessary information about the endpoints is known as the Signaling Server. 

Before we start off with the steps, it is necessary to become familiar with the basics of the integration process. 

Today we're talking multi-factor authentication, also known as two-factor authentication, and 2-step verification. It's got a few names but what is it?

Well, essentially it's proving your identity in more than one way. The principle being that if one of these authentication factors is defeated, that's not enough to give access to your data. So your data should be secure if someone steals your password for example. It's not enough to just log in twice. These different authentication factors have to work in a fundamentally different way. So you can't just use a second password or a password in a pin; because passwords and pins both rely on the same thing - your memory. So if they have to work in different ways, what different factors are available for us to use? Well, here are some of the common ones.

In-app messages are targeted notifications sent to customers/ users while they are active on the website or mobile application. They are a very effective way to engage customers as they are already within the application looking for specific information. In-app chat applications help connect better with the users and improve user retention as they are timely and targeted. 

Application Programming Interfaces or API’s are responsible for majority of system integration and functional components of modern computing landscape in both consumer and enterprise environments.

Properly constructed secure API’s provide significant benefits during initial build, integration with other systems and during entire application lifecycle while protecting sensitive information stored in business systems.

Based on author's experience designing and implementing API’s for variety of clients in financial, insurance, telecom and public sectors, security is often overlooked in favor of simplistic, vendor/product specific solutions.

This article addresses best practices for API security design in product neutral manner to help architects to plan and build easy to work with and secure API's.

Recommended approach is to separate API security from its business functionality and allow back-end developers to concentrate only on business functions. Once business logic for an API is ready, it can be published using common security components described in this article.

This article does not provide any product specific recommendations, but any modern API security/governance platform will be able to satisfy majority of suggested requirements using out-of-the-box functionality.

Digital communication APIs and SDKs! the most powerful tool in the era of digitalization. Unlike other tools, these real time communication APIs have spread their impact over all industries and have successfully grabbed the attention of proficient developers too.

Based on the demand and need of developers to know more about these digital communication APIs and SDKs concerning their market availability with pricing, features and functionalities, I have posted this article to get you some clarity with research on the top most real time chat API and SDK providers. So, let’s start over.