Take a brief look at what APIs are, why they are important, and how they are they are used.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is intermediary software that allows different applications to talk to each other. In essence, it delivers your request to a provider and then delivers the provider’s response back to you. APIs provide operations and queries that developers can use to design and build apps and web applications, for example, using APIs to connect the user-facing front ends with the back-end functionality and data.
APIs are widely used, and some popular examples of their use include:
These websites use third-party APIs to collect and display real-time aggregated flight and hotel availability from providers and use APIs to confirm the bookings with the providers. In other words, the APIs are the intermediaries that enable the website to communicate with the hotel and flight booking systems. An example of a real-time flight data display API is the ‘Aviationstack’ API which provides flight stats for 200+ countries and more than 13,000 airlines.
The option to pay with and to deposit and withdraw funds from PayPal in e-commerce (e.g. shopping, better, booking) websites uses an API. This allows the end application to work without getting access to sensitive data or other unintended permissions.
Websites that enable you to log in using different platforms (e.g. displaying login with Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn) use an API to authenticate the logins rather than having the security risk of actually logging in to the social media account.
There are a number of different types of APIs which include:
One of the key ways in which an app interacts with an API is the ‘endpoint’. This could be the specific web address that links to the functions required.
The ‘request methods’ refer to what action will be taken by referring to the API. For example, these could be ‘GET’ to request data from a server, ‘POST’ to add new data to a server, ‘PUT’ to change existing information, or ‘DELETE’ to delete existing information.
To use an API generally requires getting an API Key, testing the API endpoints, and creating an App.
The many benefits of using APIs include:
APIs tie disparate applications together, allowing them to complement and talk to each other, become greater than the sum of their parts, and in doing so they represent ways for businesses to gain efficiencies, improve and enrich services and gain competitive advantages, automate, and innovate. Companies can develop APIs and apps or use existing APIs to integrate and add value and as such APIs offer many new advantages and opportunities.
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