API Today
Ronak Raithatha
API Developer @ BoomTown!
What is an API?
API - Application Program Interface
An API expresses a software component in terms of its operations, inputs, outputs, and underlying types.
API - Application Program Interface
An API defines functionalities that are independent of their respective implementations, which allows definitions and implementations to vary without compromising the interface.
API - Application Program Interface
A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing all the building blocks. A programmer then puts the blocks together.
Working with undocumented APIs
Working with APIs without reading documentaion
Working with APIs you have mastered
IKR
Types of APIs
Language API - Java Docs
Describing libraries and classes, functions in those libraries
and classes, and the parameters and return types for those functions.
Types of APIs
Library API - UnderscoreJs Docs
Documentation listing and describing each function in the library, the parameters it needs to perform those function and what it should return
Types of APIs
REST API - FOAAS Docs
Lists and describes all accessible endpoints for a given Representational State Transfer (REST) protocol implementation. Describes verbs and what body is required with those verbs.
REST Implementation
Endpoints
URIs that execute desired code.
I.E Functions, but on the server. Where the function names are '/something/:id/something'
REST Implementation
VERBS
GET: Get everything about something.
POST: Added one thing to a list of somethings.
PUT: Change one existing thing in a list of somethings.
DELETE: Delete something.
REST Implementation
REQUEST BODY
If the ENDPOINTS are the function name, the REQUEST BODY are like the parameters that we send to a function.
GET: Generally none, since you get everything.
POST: An object containing necessary information
PUT: An object containing information to be updated, and an id pointing to the object to update.
DELETE: An id to the object to delete.
Popular formats: JSON and XML