> I have dealt with terrible APIs that were outside of my control. When I worked at Timeout.com, we had to pull in data from Ticketmaster and also Booking.com. These APIs were inconsistent, and they would change over time. They also left out fields, so all fields had to be treated as an optional, which it made it difficult to enforce a meaningful contract.
Wait what? Why would you ever work directly with the data that you grab in some foreign API?
You map the data that you actually need into some datastructure of your own making, that you have control over, and that hardly ever changes - unless you want it to. So when the API changes (or even worse, you have to exchange it for whatever reason - it's foreign after all and not under your control), all you have to do is change the mapping process, and voilà, you're back in your own safely typed world.
Wait what? Why would you ever work directly with the data that you grab in some foreign API? You map the data that you actually need into some datastructure of your own making, that you have control over, and that hardly ever changes - unless you want it to. So when the API changes (or even worse, you have to exchange it for whatever reason - it's foreign after all and not under your control), all you have to do is change the mapping process, and voilà, you're back in your own safely typed world.