More coverage on BFFs

Posted on Feb 14 2016

Late last year I wrote an article on an architectural pattern called "Backend For Frontends". This is a pattern that describes the use of a specific-purpose server-side API which can acts as an aggregating facade for user interfaces and other external interfaces. The article proved to be quite popular, and continues to generate debate in different parts of the interwebs from time to time.

The article itself was partly a result of spending some time at SoundCloud's offices, where my ThoughtWorks colleague Lukasz Plotnicki and I interviewed several engineers about their use of the pattern. After I published my own generic BFF piece, Lukasz also released "a great writeup" which goes into more detail in how the pattern emerged at SoundCloud, which is well worth a look. Now, Lukasz has also found time to sit down for an interview with the Software Engineering Daily podcast to talk more generally about SoundCloud's use of microservices.

By the way, if you're intertested in another take of microservice adoption at SoundCloud, I can recommend both Phil Calçado's "How We Ended Up With Microservices" piece from last year and SoundCloud's own Bora Tunca's talk from micoxchg just a couple of weeks ago. While in Berlin for microxchg I managed to sit down with Bora for a chat for The Magpie Talkshow, and I hope that episode will be out in April sometime.

I am planning to update the original BFF piece to cover the use of alternative middleware solutions like Falcor and Relay. In advance of that, if any of you have experience you could share of these sorts of tools I'd love to hear it!