APIs — Uses and Importance in the TECH world
Do you ever land on a website and see google maps pointing to the real-time location of the organization?
Aren’t you curious to know about these embedded interactive snippets?
This is a common example of an API!
In this post, we will discuss APIs, their importance, and various advantages provided by their usage in a software system.
So let us start with an easy explanation followed by an example,
API stands for an Application Programming Interface. They are supposed to work as a mediator between the user and the system.
Let us start with an example, imagine you are sitting in a restaurant, and you have the menu in your hand with various choices available. The kitchen is the place where your food/order will be prepared. In this scenario, we can see waiters as the APIs or the mediators between you and the kitchen. The food here is the information we browse, and the kitchen is the system or the backend architecture.
Web services nowadays are all about user interaction and smooth user experience. This is where APIs come into the picture, they give various advantages and are really easy to implement.
Here are some noteworthy advantages of using APIs,
- Allows resilience to change, by helping loosely coupled systems to communicate.
- Allows modular development by helping various teams to work on the same project irrespective of their geographical positions.
- Having a well-documented API will also generate a considerable amount of revenue.
We are unaware of it, but we use APIs on a daily basis. Tools such as weather snippets, Twitter bots, login pages, and payment gateways are some common examples. These are some essential services we tend to use in our day-to-day life.
Web APIs — An underrated tool in the world of web development!
Web API is an API that can be accessed via HTTPS protocol.
Web APIs fall under the category of API systems and are a concept rather than technology
They are usually limited to the client side of the system and can be viewed or experienced using web browsers. Due to ease of use and their ability to leverage the HTTPS protocol, web APIs have gained popularity.
Today, they are very common and are used by tech giants such as Google. The google maps API we talked about at the beginning of this blog is one of the most famous web APIs, it accounts for 50% of all APIs available used on the internet.
If you want to know more about API development, you can start by learning these technologies
- HTML
- XML
- JSON (JavaScript based)
- Postman (Platform for API developers)
We can surely say that APIs are an important part of today’s IT world. They provide various advantages and are user-friendly.
We would love to hear your thoughts on this topic as well, feel free to quote examples related to APIs, how you are implementing them, etc.
This post contains curated content from our The Guiding Voice Podcast episode #138. Our speaker Chaitanya Guntur is an experienced professional in the IT industry. A Masters degree holder in computer science from Old Dominion University, Chaitanya Guntur is the Chief Engineer at Demandbridge, a software company that builds ERP and Accounting software for the Promotional and Print Distributorship industry.
If you loved the blog you’d definitely love the podcast episode, check the episode links in the first comment.
Also, feel free to share your comments/feedback through email: theguidingvoice4u@gmail.com
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