What are Web APIs
Bruno Pedro
25+ years professional experience, founder of several API companies, published author and speaker at API conferences.
What exactly are Web APIs? Why are Web APIs so popular and widely used? Let’s first explore what APIs are so you can understand how they evolved into Web APIs.
API stands for Application Programming Interface, and it lets developers integrate any two parts of an application or any different applications together. It consists of various elements such as functions, protocols, and tools that allow developers to build applications. A common goal of all types of APIs is to accelerate the development of applications by providing a part of its functionality out-of-the-box, so developers do not have to implement it themselves. There are APIs for all types of systems, including operating systems, libraries, and the Web.
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After having read the article you should know what APIs are and how they have evolved into what we call Web APIs — actually, we simply drop the word “Web” and just use “APIs.”
You should also gain knowledge about some of the existing approaches to serving and interacting with Web APIs. There are much more protocols than the ones covered in this article, and new ones are being released all the time.
How are you using APIs these days? Feel free to share your experience.
Read the full, original article.