Tutorials System Design Tutorial
API Optimization for High Throughput — Complete Guide
API Optimization for High Throughput — Complete Guide: free step-by-step lesson with examples, common mistakes, and interview tips — part of System Design Tutorial on Toolliyo Academy.
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System Design Tutorial · Lesson 85 of 100
API Optimization for High Throughput
Basics ✓ → Scale ✓ → Interview
Interview · 3 — Case studies · ~10 min · Module 9: Performance and Optimization
What is this?
API optimization reduces work per request — payloads, chatty calls, serialization, connection reuse, and pagination.
Why should you care?
ShopNest mobile on slow networks feels every extra round trip and fat JSON field.
See it live — copy this example
Sketch the architecture on paper. These lessons focus on concepts and trade-offs.
Aggregate with BFF instead of 8 calls
JSON: omit nulls; compress
HTTP/2 or connection pool reuse
Pagination: keyset, page size caps
Cache GETs that are safeRun Example »
This lesson uses terminal or setup steps. Run commands on your computer — the live editor appears on coding lessons.
What happened?
- Fewer calls and smaller bodies win.
- Reuse connections.
- Cap page sizes.
- Cache only safe idempotent reads.
Practice next
- Cut one ShopNest screen from N calls to fewer.
- Remove unused JSON fields.
- Enforce max page size.
- Add ETag/If-None-Match for PDP.
- Profile serialization cost.
Remember
Less chattiness, smaller payloads. Cap lists. Reuse connections.
Home BFF slimdown
ShopNest home payload shrinks 40%.
Outcome: Time-to-interactive improves on 4G.
Interview prep for this lesson
Practice these questions aloud after reading—each links to a full structured answer.
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