What is an API and How Does it Work?

What are Layers of Communication?

First, answer this question.

A quick question that you can easily answer. How do apps let you create an account and log in with your Facebook or Google account credentials?

Here is another one that you can think about too. How does the weather app talk to another system?

The way these two systems talk to each other is called an API. An API states the rule for communication to happen. The system takes the inputs it performs some technical tasks in the back. This layer of communication is called the endpoint, which serves as a point of contact to submit the inputs.

There is a protocol about what inputs are required and what result you will get in return with each endpoint. If you don’t apply the correct inputs, your request will be rejected. You also have to apply an API key with your request, which is just a unique ID to identify your app. This way, the system records who is accessing its endpoint.

An app can communicate through different APIs. All APIs will have some documentation describing how to communicate with the endpoints.

Examples of Some APIs

Some systems won’t have an API, so in that case, you won’t be able to talk to the system at all. Now see a more concrete example of working with an API.

National Weather Service API

For a quick weather update, you’ve used a weather API. There’s a proliferation of weather APIs out there. First of all, this weather API is entirely free.

Netflix API

If you’ve ever used a video streaming app, Netflix API configures your content for the intended device with heavy lifting on the backend of things.

Spotify API

Likewise, the Spotify API lets you engage with the Spotify library in several ways via an API. You can retrieve track info for your favourite TV series, albums, and any podcast of your favourite content creator.

We Use APIs All The Time

As you can see, APIs are not mystical tools rater. They function as a router that delivers your WiFi. Considering how digital with software and mobile apps are interconnected today, APIs are more prevalent for developers and end-users.

These are also some excellent APIs for the newcomers, the most useful ones out there, which could benefit the developers greatly if they explore the software.

What Happens When You Hit The Endpoint?

Let’s talk about Jason’s placeholder having dummy data. You can get the pull request and test it across multiple operating systems and versions of your runtime.

We put inputs in the form of parameters, supply a date range, which field you want to sort by publish date, and the most important thing is the publish date. Endpoints and inputs that are required will have a record to identify who is accessing their API.

Supply your API Key to access. Date range sort by popularity, upon passing in the required inputs and passing in the API key so when you hit enter, you make that request to the endpoint and get the results according to the specified parameters. The data format is called JSON that can be used for parsing, processing and extracting this information to use in the app.

The Common API Functionality

Here are some of the common APIs that we commonly interact with as an internet user which includes E-commerce payment, linking Amazon products to your website, and the use of Google Maps for directions. Some more common ones are