- TALK TO SALES: +1 (919) 957-6150
Application Program Interface or API, quite simply, is a standardized set of specifications that allow a variety of software components and/or applications to interact, share data, and communicate. API specifications are not universal and there are many forms that control data structures, object classes, routines, and variables. Some of these are in the form of vendor documentation like the Windows API or are found in the libraries of program languages. The most common of these are written in C++ and Java.
APIs language-dependent format can be used as a syntax with the elements of a particular programming language and are the most convenient to implement. But APIs can also be written to be used across several programming languages and most generally are used in service-oriented applications that use remote procedure calls. Web services such as Google Maps is a prime example because, through the Google Maps API, it can control what information can be shared and how it can be used.
API’s are used as a term to describe a complete interface or a single function, and its meaning is always determined in the context in which it is used. For example, an API may determine a particular task and in procedural languages, such as C or C++ and the APIs action is usually determined by a function call. They also, in most cases, include a description of all the functions or routines provided. For non-techies this means that for every click of a mouse or radio button checked there has to be specific underlying code that tells the application to perform another task or return an error message when the proper user-steps haven’t been completed.
When APIs are associated with a set of behaviors in object-oriented programming languages they include class definitions. These definitions are a set of behavior rules, derived from a class that is simply a set of rules that determine an action. They are implemented in terms of class methods or more generally by all its public components hence all public methods, but also possibly including any internal entity made public, like fields, constants, and nested objects.
In some cases this can be where a class interface in an API has no methods at all, but only behaviors associated with it. Java, for instance, includes a specific interface, which is called a marker interface, requiring that each class that implements it should behave in a serialized fashion. Object oriented language APIs are still distributed as a library set and are used by the developers to build new Java programs. In all cases, for the best results, the quality of the documentation associated with any API is the determining factor in its success in terms of ease of use.
APIs used in web development are defined as a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request message which is usually contained in Extensible Markup Language (XML) and allow for a combination of multiple services that have come to be known as “mashups.” Publishing these APIs has brought about the sharing of content dynamically across different web applications. The most commonly used are Facebook and Twitter’s alliances, where updates from Twitter or pictures added to Flickr or Photobucket, are also simultaneously posted to Facebook walls and status updates, websites, and other social networking platforms.
APIs used in web development are defined as a Hypertext
