Stop Hardcoding: Why Your Application Needs a Reference Data API

It starts innocently enough. You need a dropdown list of countries for a user registration form. "I'll just grab a JSON file and drop it in the project," you think. It's fast, it works, and you move on to the next task. But this simple shortcut is a form of technical debt that, when repeated across projects and microservices, grows into a data management nightmare.

This static, slow-changing, foundational data—country codes, currencies, languages, product categories, store locations—is known as reference data. It's the essential context that makes your transactional data meaningful. And managing it by hand is a recipe for inconsistency, inefficiency, and errors.

There’s a better way. It's time to stop managing static datasets in every application and embrace a centralized solution.

The Hidden Costs of Manual Data Management

When you hardcode a list of ISO codes or copy-paste a CSV of currencies into your app, you're creating future problems for your team and your entire organization.

• Data Drift & Inconsistency: Your monolith has one list of countries. Microservice A, spun up six months later, has a slightly different one. A new analytics service has another. Which one is correct? When South Sudan is formed or when Swaziland becomes Eswatini, how many places do you need to make the update? This creates a fractured data landscape where a "single source of truth" is impossible.
• Maintenance Nightmare: Every update becomes a scavenger hunt. Developers have to locate every instance of the outdated data, manually update it, and redeploy each application. This is a tedious, error-prone process that drains developer productivity and introduces risk with every change.
• Code & Database Bloat: Storing the same reference data in dozens of different codebases and databases is redundant and inefficient. It increases the size of your applications and backups for no good reason.
• Integration Hurdles: When different systems use different reference data, integrating them becomes a complex mapping exercise. Reports become unreliable, and data reconciliation becomes a full-time job.

The Solution: A Centralized Reference Data API

The solution to this chaos is to treat reference data like any other critical component of your infrastructure: manage it centrally and expose it through a clean, reliable API.

By adopting a reference data API, you immediately establish a single source of truth. Every application, from the legacy monolith to the latest serverless function, queries the same endpoint.

This approach transforms data management:

• Updates are Instant and Global: Change a currency name in one place, and every application gets the update on its next API call. No more redeploys.
• Consistency is Guaranteed: All systems are aligned, eliminating data conflicts and simplifying integrations.
• Developers are More Productive: Instead of managing static files, developers can make a simple API call and get back to building features that deliver business value.

Introducing reference.do: Your Single Source of Truth

This is precisely the problem we built reference.do to solve. We provide a simple, powerful, and reliable API for all your reference data needs.

Stop managing static datasets in every application. Access, query, and integrate standard and custom reference data through one simple, reliable API.

Getting started is incredibly straightforward. Instead of wrestling with a local JSON file, you can fetch a complete, up-to-date list of world currencies with a few lines of code.

Go Beyond the Basics: Standard and Custom Data

A robust reference data strategy needs to handle more than just public datasets. While reference.do provides a wide range of standard datasets out-of-the-box—like ISO codes for countries (3166), currencies (4217), and languages (639)—its real power lies in its flexibility.

You can upload, manage, version, and query your own proprietary reference datasets right alongside our standard public ones.

Imagine managing:

• Your company's internal product categories
• A list of approved suppliers
• User role and permission definitions
• Tiers for your subscription plans
• A directory of your office or warehouse locations

All of this can be managed in a single platform and consumed through the same simple API, providing a unified data layer for your entire organization.

Embrace Data On Demand

Hardcoding data is a short-term fix that creates long-term pain. By centralizing your foundational datasets with a service like reference.do, you eliminate inconsistencies, simplify maintenance, and empower your developers to move faster.

Stop the copy-paste cycle. Establish a single source of truth for your organization and get your data on demand.

Ready to automate your reference data management? Get started with reference.do today.