Application Programming Interface), is used for communication between two software applications or between two websites. Or we can also say, a function within computer software that provides the developer the functionality to use the service of any application.
To understand the API, we resort to an example, in which we will talk about the online ticket booking system, in which you must have seen that whenever you book an online train or flight ticket, they are all from the same software, Such as Paytm, MakeMyTrip, Yatra, etc. In this, you do not have to visit their official website to book a train or flight ticket. We use APIs to do all this work. Nowadays most of you have also seen the option of Log in with Google or Login with Facebook, this is also a good example of API.
WEB APIs are used to communicate through web browsers such as Chrome, Mozilla, etc. WEB APIs can be accessed through the HTTP protocol.
Open APIs are called public or external APIs, as these Open APIs can be used by all developers without any restriction such as “https://api.covid19api.com/" is an Open APIs. Through which you can get information about the case of coronavirus.
These are the APIs that any developer needs to have specific access to use, as it is not publicly available.
These are APIs that cannot be accessed externally. It is used only internally to share data or it can be used to share internal resources.
Multiple data sources or services can be used by composite APIs. Composite APIs are mostly used within the Microservices Architecture in which a single task is being performed by a number of different services.
Some API Architecture And Protocols:
1. REST (representational state transfer)
2. SOAP (simple object access protocol)
3. JSON-RPC and XML-RPC
API and security
A lot of people think about the API that if through the API, our phone’s data can go to the server, then how is the data of our phone safe from it, if you also have this question in your mind, then let me tell you that the API Through the application, the data is sent as much as is needed and the server back also sends the big book data that our app needs.
If you sign in with google in an app and enter your email and password, then only this data will go to Google’s server and Baha will get the required data from Baha. In the same way, if you post on Facebook, the information related to that post will be sent to the Facebook server.
Now if we talk about the API, then every app that uses the API is given a different API key by which to track the activities done by that app with the API and if there is any wrong activity If that app is permanently banned from using the API again.
Where is the API used?
The API is used almost everywhere in programming. Now it is absolutely not necessary that the API only downloads data from a server, maybe an app needs to use the data of a particular library even if it needs the API. Will fall. An example of this is OpenGL and Microsoft’s DirectX library using which we take some data from the operating system itself.
Apart from this, if we want to log in to our app and sign up and we do not have to create our own server for this, then you can use Google or other APIs.
The API has a huge contribution in the digital world, it cannot be told in a small post that for this you will have to take a little more knowledge so that you can understand the API better.
Originally published at https://www.mrdeepak.com.