Let’s Talk About APIs
I have wanted to write about APIs for a while, but life, as you know, is challenging, especially nowadays. Since I work with APIs this post is long overdue. API stands for Application Programming Interface, which is the interface that defines interactions between multiple software applications.
What does it mean?
An API is what allows two applications to talk to each other via software that is the intermediate in this process. I once heard this analogy saying that the API is the waiter who takes notes of the request from the client, talks with the kitchen to make it happen, and then brings that delicious food to your table.
An API is what allows a component to interface with the rest of the program. It’s more a product than a code since it’s designed for consumption for a specific audience.
APIs originated in the 1940s, although the term didn’t emerge until the 1960–1970s. Nowadays, APIs are treated more like products than code since they’re documented and have versioning and maintenance created in a way to achieve certain expectations and life cycle.
When an API interacts with other applications, the touchpoints of the communication are called endpoints. They can include a URL of a server or service so the endpoint is one end of a communication channel.
The goal of an API is to provide a program interface with a certain set of services to many different applications that, as you can imagine, have different sets of criteria and users.
An Example of APIs
What you may not realize is that every time you use certain apps, you’re using their API or a 3rd party API(s) to make that happen. For example, when we checked Google Flights to see the best flight and route to our destination, we were using the APIs of the airlines to access this information.
In this case, Google Flights accesses the airlines’ APIs to search for the available flights and corresponding pricing from the airline’s databases. The API then takes all these responses including the flight data like seats, itinerary, etc. and delivers it to the Google Flights website, where it then will be shown as a list so the user can make comparisons.
The History Behind It
In 1940, British computer scientists, Wilkes and Wheeler, worked in libraries for modular software and published their book, “The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer,”which contains the first published API specification.
The term, application program interfaces, without the -ing suffix, is first recorded in a 1968 paper. The paper was about Data structures and techniques for remote computer graphics and presented at an AFIPS conference.
API was defined as a set of services available to a programmer for performing certain tasks in 1990. Commercial adoption began with XML and JSON by 2000. Over the years the concept of the APIs expanded with the web APIs, and this became the most common meaning of the term API.
Let’s Talk About Security
With each communication where you share small portions of data, an API provides a layer of security. Also important is the fact that they tend to be more standardized, which increases the additional layer of governance and security, performance, and scale. Today, APIs are documented for consumption and versioning.
API Design and Documentation
The way the API is designed and documented greatly impacts its usage. It should provide the tools a user would expect it to have. Think about a complex piece of software and how challenging and important its organization is.
The design of programming interfaces is a crucial part of software architecture. The API documentation is extremely important because it describes what the API offers and how to use it. Good documentation addresses everything the user needs to know and how they should use what the API offers.
The documentation is crucial not only for the development and also for the maintenance of applications using the API. It may include comprehensive documentation with code snippets, design rationales, expected performance, and of course, typical use case scenarios. It also has the implementation details including information about the API restrictions and limitations.
The Different Types of APIs
An API platform comprises two or more distinct independent APIs for different groups of consumers. While the Web API is an application interface for web servers and web browsers, other types of APIs include Open APIs, Internal APIs, Partner APIs, and Composite APIs.
Recap
- An API can be a specific component designed to an industry-standard or even entirely custom, allowing users to use the interface modularly and independently.
- When you’re building applications, the use of existing APIs can simplify the programming and development of your app.
- A single API can use different libraries that share the same programming interface and have multiple implementations.
- Mashups are defined as an API that coordinates countless APIs. For example, a web API that integrates a combination of multiple APIs into new apps.
- Interface stability is an important factor of any API that becomes available to the public because changes could negate compatibility with clients using the API.
- An API doesn’t have a graphical interface, nor an explicit component in your code. When an API interacts with another system, the touchpoints of these interactions are called endpoints.
Additional Reading
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