Without realizing it, almost all of us will have used a service that relies on APIs at some point in our lives. API stands for Application Programming Interface and, in essence, they are used to allow computers or applications to ‘talk’ to each other. Some famous examples of websites and software employing multiple APIs behind the scenes to power their services include Facebook and Twitter – however, the technology is widely used across a huge variety of other websites and applications.
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A basic guide to the workings of APIs
The majority of us realize that most website and application User Interfaces (UI) are designed for exclusive use by humans (i.e. featuring text, images, video, buttons, etc to make them easier to use and understand). At the other end of the scale, APIs are intended for use by computers or machines – essentially as a set of rules that allow communication between devices or software. In terms of flow, APIs sit as an intermediary in the computing process – a typical working example might be a human interacting with an application or website which then calls an API, in turn retrieving data or generating a function on a web server or in another piece of software. To give a real-world example, you could think of an API being rather like a waiter in a restaurant who takes your order then relays it to the kitchen to be prepared. APIs work in the same way, almost as a middle man.
