Application Programming Interface (API) is an interfacing software platform that allows the exchange of any information or data and supports the interaction among different applications or any such intermediaries. Google Maps, Twitter, Facebook are a few examples of APIs used in our day to day life.
Whenever we use an application on our device, the very first step the application does is to connect to the internet, after connecting to the internet it sends the information or the collected data to the server. The server then converts the data, take the necessary action, and later sends it back to the device, which can be understood by the user.
API | Example
Let us look into a simple example that can help us to understand the function of an API. Imagine yourself in a foreign land, where you can’t speak the language spoken there. You visit a garment manufacturing shop and decide to buy something for yourself. In this case, the garment manufacturer is the system. It needs your instruction or we can say your choices. You take the help of your friend to translate or to convey your messages to the manufacturer.
So your friend here is an API who acts as a messenger between you and the manufacturer. The system (manufacturer) then delivers you the desired result (cloth ). He fulfils the link to communicate between the system and the user, which is the job of an API.
APIs play a vital role in IoT technology. We can say that IoT is nothing without API. As the connection or interaction of things in the Internet of Things is possible due to API. APIs are driving IoT technologies. It ensures the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data. Flight bookings, login activities, online payments as well as whether updates can be done using APIs.
Web APIs
Web API is basically for web servers or web browsers that can be accessed using the HTTP protocol. It can be developed using java, python, etc. Also in web APIS, a client can access the web applications but not the further web details. There are four main types or categories of web APIs.
Types
Open APIs:-
Open APIs are also known as Public APIs as it is available to the general public and has no much restrictions to access.
Partner APIs:-
Partner APIs are similar to open APIs but in this case, the developer needs a license or certain rights to access the APIs. These are controlled by third party gateway APIs.
Internal APIs:-
Internal APIs are also known as Private APIs.These are designed for internal use within an organization or the company. This has better security and is not available for public use. Only internal systems can access them.
Composite APIs:-
Composite APIs are used to combine different service APIs in one place. It helps to speed up the process and lowers the server load and also improves the performance as everything is available in a single place
Communication Levels in APIs –
- High-Level APIs-
- comes with few details
- easy to use
- limited functionality
- Low-level APIs-
- more detailed
- more functionality
- need to be experienced to use it
- efficient
- manipulation or changes of function within an application is possible
PROTOCOLS / SPECIFICATIONS OF APIS –
REST(Representational State Transfer):-
It is one of the most popular Web APIs used. The interface has nothing to do with storage or backend. The client-server communication is simple here and is based on URLs or HTTP protocols. these are also easy to build and can be cached. These are very reliable and have larger applications. SSL security is used here. thus, It uses JSON, XML for formatting. It provides us with the option of flexible data formatting.
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol):-
It is much complex but also well defined in terms of security. Banking transactions or any other applications that need high security use this. It can allow any style of programming and is based on a wide range of protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, TCP, etc. also, uses XML for formatting. It is one of the established API used.
JSON-RPC (JavaScript Object Notation-Remote Procedure Calls):-
It has one of the best request efficiency. thus, It uses JSON formatting. It is much reliable and simple to use. Popular programming languages e.g., Java, JavaScript, Ruby, C#, PHP and Python )and application platforms provide good support for producing and consuming JSON data. It is human-readable as well as machine-readable and is designed in such a way that they call methods.
XML-RPC(Extensible Markup Language -Remote Procedure Calls):-
This is much similar to JSON-RPC, but here XML is used for formatting of data. It is much simpler and uses minimum bandwidth. While REST performs basis on resources the RPCs depend on the actions.
however, APIs have helped IoT emerge as a powerful technology in today’s world. afterwards Wearable watches to home automation systems are all dependent on APIs.
Written By: Anusha Shetty
Reviewed by: Batta Pruthvi
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