Question about Thunkable integration & 3rd party API services

General
1

I wanted to inquire you whether I could securely integrate my Thunkable app with your services and then use this as a secure way of accessing third party APIs. For example, I’d want to access Google Cloud API but I don’t want to include the API key in my app due to the possibility of reverse engineering, unsecure communication etc. But I was wondering if I could direct the users of the app to authenticate in your services and then send requests from the app to your backend, which would have the Google Cloud API key and could then relay these requests/answers back and forth between the users of my app and the Google Cloud API without the need to involve the Google Cloud API key anywhere near the app or its communications. For example, I might need simple geocoding services from Google for the app, and relaying requests for this from the app and returning answers from the Google Maps API back to app users, all through your backend, would be what I wanted. And it would be even better if I could set quotas etc. for these requests.

I’d appreciate if you could iterate if this was possible. Thank you!

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Hi @Heikki_S!
Thank you for your interest for Backendless platform.
Yes, you can achieve your goal with Backendless. For this purpose you can create CloudCode service which will act like a proxy between your client app and 3rd party APIs.

For more information about integration between platforms you can check this article:

For even more information you can check documentation for developing CloudCode services:
https://backendless.com/docs/bl-js/
https://backendless.com/docs/bl-java/
https://backendless.com/docs/codeless/

Regards, Andriy

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Hi Andriy,

This is great to hear! Thanks for your reply!

For a few basic integrations of Backendless with Thunkable your documentation already helped me to understand things, however, this case seems a little more complicated (at least for my skill level).

So, could I ask if there was a possibility for you to give a simple example / walkthrough for me on how to set this up at a very basic level. It’s just that as I’m new to your platform, it will take so much time for me to zero in on the right course–if you could give a simple example, it would save a lot of time for me (and probably for many others too). As coming from the Thunkable world, I totally appreciate the more simple you can make these things. :slight_smile:

So, let’s say, I’d want to integrate a Thunkable Web Api component, which sends simple queries, with something like Google Cloud’s Maps Api. I know you already have such services, but for the sake of illustration, this just came to my mind.

I’ll use the first example from here: https://developers.google.com/places/web-service/search

And the call is:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/findplacefromtext/json?input=Museum%20of%20Contemporary%20Art%20Australia&inputtype=textquery&fields=photos,formatted_address,name,rating,opening_hours,geometry&key=YOUR_API_KEY

So I would put the Google Api Key to Backendless and instead call, in the client app that I’m building, Backendless Api with a more or less similar kind of call structure and a key, which wouldn’t need to be kept secret. Backendless would change this public key to the actual Google Api key and pass on the request to Google–and then, again, relay the response from Google back to the client. I would also want to put a limit to the daily Api calls, let’s say, to a thousand calls per day.

Something really cool would be to use your authentication and identify individual users and then limit the calls each of them can make daily, besides this overall quota for all daily Api calls, but maybe this is for the future…

So, if possible, could you walk me through how this should be done on Backendless? I’m not really a pro with backend or even coding–would just want to build my own apps with Thunkable and also utilize Apis safely, as probably quite a few other Thunkers, among others, want to do.

Maybe this is too much to ask, but thought it was worthwhile to ask anyway. :slight_smile:

Best, Heikki

4

Hi Heikki,

As much as we would love to help, this would be outside of the support domain. However, we do have a separate group providing consulting services. The team focuses on building solutions on top of Backendless. If you would like to get a quote, please contact sales@backendless.com.

Regards,
Mark

5

Hi Mark,

I totally get it. I’ll send you an e-mail. Although I’m just thinking through all the options at this point & planning the road ahead, so I’d only need a very rough estimate what it would cost for you to set something like this up.

Best, Heikki