What is an API?

5 min readApr 30, 2023

An Application Programming Interface (API) is essentially a set of protocols and rules that enable communication between different software systems or applications. It acts as a bridge that allows one application to interact with another and access its functionalities and data.

APIs come in different forms and can be used for various purposes, such as sharing data between applications, automating tasks, or integrating different services. APIs can be created for web applications, mobile apps, operating systems, databases, or any other software system that needs to communicate with one another.

APIs are essential to modern software development because they allow developers to build more complex and sophisticated applications by leveraging the functionalities and data of other systems. Instead of building everything from scratch, developers can use APIs to access ready-made services, such as payment processing, social media integration, or geolocation tracking. This saves time and resources and allows developers to focus on creating unique features for their own application.

Moreover, APIs are not only used by developers, but they also have become an integral part of the digital economy, facilitating interactions between businesses, customers, and third-party services. For example, e-commerce websites use APIs to communicate with payment gateways and shipping providers, enabling seamless transactions and order fulfillment.

To elaborate on it more, an API endpoint is a specific URL that is used to interact with the server. The most common HTTP methods, such as GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE, are used to send requests to an API endpoint for retrieving data, creating new data, updating existing data, and deleting data. APIs can also interact with databases and perform server-side computations. This allows them to be used for a wide range of tasks, from simple data retrieval to complex data analysis and can involve communication with other computers along the way. The API communicates with the outside world, and when a user logs in, two pieces of data are transmitted from the front-end code to the back-end. If the login process is successful, a response is returned as true; otherwise, a response is sent back as false. APIs can operate without a user interface, which is beneficial for machine-to-machine communication that involves automatic data exchange without human intervention.

The weather app on your smartphone needs to obtain meteorological data in order to display the current temperature and forecast. Since smartphones lack built-in sensors for temperature, the weather app needs to retrieve this information from a server that stores such data. In this case, an API enables the app to connect to the server and transmit and receive data. APIs act as a conduit through which apps can access data. Without APIs, it would be like having wires without outlets on your wall when you need to charge your phone. APIs are widely used in various applications such as Instagram and Facebook.

Direct communication between back-end developers enables companies to scale up and employ thousands of software developers. Teams have unique apps with APIs that can exchange requests and responses. To manage API usage and prevent server crashes, API keys are a novel concept that must be connected to most APIs. This is important for security and to prevent APIs from breaking.

API vs ORM

ORM is a programming approach that associates relational database tables with objects in object-oriented programming languages. Instead of explicitly writing SQL queries, it enables developers to communicate with a database via objects. An ORM is often used to give a more natural approach to interact with the data while abstracting away the difficulties of working with databases.

An API is a collection of standards, tools, and protocols used to create software applications. Even if they were created by different businesses or organizations, APIs give various software components a mechanism to communicate and exchange data.By giving developers a consistent and standardized way to access data and services from other apps or platforms, APIs are intended to streamline the development process.

In conclusion, an API is a set of protocols used to create software applications, whereas an ORM is a method for mapping objects to a relational database. An API is a method to engage with data and services offered by other apps or platforms, whereas an ORM is a way to interface with data contained in a database.

If I am using an API for a database how is it different than using an ORM?

The level of abstraction and control over data modification are the key differences between utilizing an API and an ORM when accessing a database.

You normally send HTTP queries to the API endpoints that have been made available by the database provider when utilizing an API to access a database. The activities that can be carried out on the data using the API endpoints typically include record creation, reading, updating, and deletion. The lower-level specifics of connecting to the database, running the SQL queries, and providing the results in a defined format, like JSON, will be handled by the API.

On the other hand, when using an ORM to access a database, you are working directly with objects in your code that map to tables and rows in the database. The ORM provides a higher-level, object-oriented interface for interacting with the data by abstracting away the lower-level mechanics of working with the database. This implies that you can modify the data using objects and methods that are particular to your programming language in a more natural way.

In conclusion, utilizing an ORM provides a more object-oriented interface for dealing with the data, whereas using an API to access a database provides a standardized, RESTful interface for performing CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations on the data. Whichever strategy you go with will depend on the particulars of your project and how much control you require over the data manipulation.

To put it simply:

A set of standardized URLs that the API provider has disclosed are used when you use an API to access a database to communicate with it. Consider these URLs to be entry points to the database. By sending an HTTP request to the URL, you knock on the door of the API provider, who will either open it for you to read, write, or alter the data or if necessary, deny you access if your permissions are insufficient.

On the other hand, you are not interacting with the database directly when you use an ORM. Instead, you deal with objects in your code that correspond to database rows and tables. Consider doing this as playing with dolls that stand in for the actual data in the database. Your programming language’s specific methods can be used to manipulate these objects in your code, and the ORM will handle converting those operations into SQL queries that can be used to access the database.

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