Developer Builds API Aggregator to Learn Backend Error Handling and Testing

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A coding teacher learning backend development built an API aggregator that chains multiple external APIs — combining weather, currency, and news data into a single endpoint. The project required passing the output of a geolocation API as input to a weather API, illustrating how real-world services can be composed together. The developer implemented structured error handling using HTTP status codes (500, 502, 504) to clearly communicate whether failures originated from the internal server or external services. A TTL cache was added to reduce redundant API calls, though the developer noted its limitations around cache stampedes and single-process scope. Testing was handled with Pytest by replacing the HTTP client with a fake that simulated timeouts and invalid responses, allowing failure-path code to be verified without waiting for real services to go down.

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