What is an API? In English, please.
Actually, API represents Application Programming Interface. Sooner or later, most substantial organizations have assembled APIs for their clients, or for interior utilize.
Be that as it may, how would you clarify API in plain English? Also, is there a more extensive significance than the one utilized being developed and business? To begin with, how about we pull back and take a gander at how the web itself functions.
WWW and remote servers
When I consider the Web, I envision an extensive system of associated servers.
Each page on the web is put away some place on a remote server. A remote server isn't so enchanted after all — it's only a piece of a remotely found PC that is improved to process demands.
To place things in context, you can turn up a server on your PC equipped for serving a whole site to the Web (indeed, a nearby server is the thing that engineers use to create sites before discharging them to the general population).
When you type www.facebook.com into your program, a demand goes out to Facebook's remote server. When your program gets the reaction, it deciphers the code and shows the page.
To the program, otherwise called the customer, Facebook's server is an API. This implies each time you visit a page on the Web, you connect with some remote server's API.
An API isn't equivalent to the remote server — rather it is the piece of the server that gets asks for and sends reactions.
How is this Google Calendar’s API different from the API of any other remote server out there?
In specialized terms, the thing that matters is the organization of the demand and the reaction.
To render the entire site page, your program expects a reaction in HTML, which contains presentational code, while Google Calendar's API call would simply restore the data — likely in an arrangement like JSON.
In the event that your site's server is making the API ask for, your site's server is the customer (like your program being the customer when you utilize it to explore to a site).
From your clients viewpoint, APIs enable them to finish the activity without leaving your site.
Most current sites devour probably some outsider APIs.
Numerous issues as of now host a third-get-together arrangement, be it as a library or administration. It's frequently simply simpler and more solid to utilize a current arrangement.
It's normal for advancement groups to separate their application into numerous servers that discussion to one another through APIs. The servers that perform assistant capacities for the principle application server are normally alluded to as microservices.
To outline, when an organization offers an API to their clients, it just implies that they've constructed an arrangement of committed URLs that arrival unadulterated information responses — meaning the reactions won't contain the sort of presentational overhead that you would expect in a graphical UI like a site.
Would you be able to make these solicitations with your program? Frequently, yes. Since the real HTTP transmission occurs in content, your program will dependably do as well as can be expected to show the reaction.
For instance, you can get to GitHub's API specifically with your program without requiring an entrance token. Here's the JSON reaction you get when you visit a GitHub client's API course in your program (https://api.github.com/clients/petrgazarov):
{
"login": "petrgazarov",
"id": 5581195,
"avatar_url": "https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/5581195?v=3",
"gravatar_id": "",
"url": "https://api.github.com/users/petrgazarov",
"html_url": "https://github.com/petrgazarov",
"followers_url": "https://api.github.com/users/petrgazarov/followers",
"following_url": "https://api.github.com/users/petrgazarov/following{/other_user}",
"gists_url": "https://api.github.com/users/petrgazarov/gists{/gist_id}",
"starred_url": "https://api.github.com/users/petrgazarov/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
"subscriptions_url": "https://api.github.com/users/petrgazarov/subscriptions",
"organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/users/petrgazarov/orgs",
"repos_url": "https://api.github.com/users/petrgazarov/repos",
"events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/petrgazarov/events{/privacy}",
"received_events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/petrgazarov/received_events",
"type": "User",
"site_admin": false,
"name": "Petr Gazarov",
"company": "PolicyGenius",
"blog": "http://petrgazarov.com/",
"location": "NYC",
"email": "[email protected]",
"hireable": null,
"bio": null,
"public_repos": 23,
"public_gists": 0,
"followers": 7,
"following": 14,
"created_at": "2013-10-01T00:33:23Z",
"updated_at": "2016-08-02T05:44:01Z"
}
The browser seems to have done just fine displaying a JSON response. A JSON response like this is ready for use in your code. It‘s easy to extract data from this text. Then you can do whatever you want with the data.