What are APIs..? How do they work..?

What is an API?

What exactly is an API? We hear about how valuable APIs are all the time; our founder, Ross Mason, often says that they will have a significant impact on business. However, what is the definition of an API?

API stands for Application Programming Interface. An API is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other.  In other words, an API is the messenger that delivers your request to the provider that you’re requesting it from and then delivers the response back to you.

An API defines functionalities that are independent of their respective implementations, which allows those implementations and definitions to vary without compromising each other. Therefore, a good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing the building blocks.

How do APIs work?

Imagine a waiter in a restaurant.  You, the customer, are sitting at the table with a menu of choices to order from, and the kitchen is the provider who will fulfill your order.

You need a link to communicate your order to the kitchen and then to deliver your food back to your table. It can’t be the chef because she’s cooking in the kitchen. You need something to connect the customer who’s ordering food and the chef who prepares it.  That’s where the waiter — or the API —  enters the picture.

The waiter takes your order, delivers it to the kitchen, telling the kitchen what to do. It then delivers the response, in this case, the food, back to you. Moreover, if it’s designed correctly, hopefully, your order won’t crash!

A real example of an API

How are APIs used in the real world? Here’s a very common scenario – booking a flight.

When you search for lights online, you have a menu of options to choose from. You choose a departure city and date, a return city and date, cabin class, and other variables like your meal, your seat, or baggage requests.

To book your flight, you need to interact with the airline’s website to access the airline’s database to see if any seats are available on those dates, and what the cost might be based on the date, flight time, route popularity, etc.

You need access to that information from the airline’s database, whether you’re interacting with it from the website or an online travel service that aggregates information from multiple airlines. Alternatively, you might be accessing the information from a mobile phone. In any case, you need to get the information, and so the application must interact with the airline’s API, giving it access to the airline’s data.

The API is the interface that, like your helpful waiter, runs and delivers the data from the application you’re using to the airline’s systems over the Internet. It also then takes the airline’s response to your request and delivers right back to the travel application you’re using. Moreover, through each step of the process, it facilitates the interaction between the application and the airline’s systems – from seat selection to payment and booking.

APIs do the same for all interactions between applications, data, and devices. They allow the transmission of data from system to system, creating connectivity. APIs provide a standard way of accessing any application data, or device, whether it’s accessing cloud applications like Salesforce, or shopping from your mobile phone.

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