Explaining APIs to your grandmother (2024)

FAQs

Explaining APIs to your grandmother? ›

“APIs are computers sitting in various places. Each computer has an address. If we know the address, we can contact the computer and use the service.”

An API is another way to ask for and get data more often presented in more familiar ways, for example, as a web page or data displayed in a software application on your computer. Google, Twitter, and countless online applications provide an API as an additional interface to their data.

For APIs to speak to each other, one API acts as the client making requests to the server API. The server API then responds to these requests. This communication uses standard internet protocols like HTTP and standard data formats like JSON. The APIs agree on how requests and responses should be structured.

An application programming interface (API) is a set of programming functions, tools, and protocols that allow external applications to access and interact with either the features or the data of a platform, operating system, application, or service.

For the hi-tech grandma

“APIs are computers sitting in various places. Each computer has an address. If we know the address, we can contact the computer and use the service.”

APIs are mechanisms that enable two software components to communicate with each other using a set of definitions and protocols. For example, the weather bureau's software system contains daily weather data. The weather app on your phone “talks” to this system via APIs and shows you daily weather updates on your phone.

An API connects your business processes, services, content, and data to channel partners, internal teams, and independent developers in an easy and secure way. APIs are quickly becom- ing the de facto standard by which companies exchange data and build consistent cross-channel customer experiences.

Learning and using APIs can be difficult for reasons stemming from the very nature of software. For example, due to its high ductility, software can evolve quickly, which means that APIs can rapidly become outdated.

The Google Maps API and Twitter API may be among the most widely used API examples, but most software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers offer APIs that let developers write code that posts data to and retrieves data from the provider's site as well.

What is an example of a real time API? ›

Real-Time API Examples

Google Maps API: The Google Maps API provides real-time location data for applications, such as ride-sharing services, food delivery apps, and location-based games.

In practice, an API simply looks like a hefty block of code. But it empowers developers to build user-friendly software. An API is a hefty block of code that empowers developers to build user-friendly software.

APIs, or application programming interfaces, act as the language that allows different software applications to talk to one another. Imagine you're ordering a coffee at a cafe; the API is like the waiter who takes your order to the barista and then brings your coffee to you.

Many people ask themselves, “What is an API?” API is the acronym for application programming interface — a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. APIs are an accessible way to extract and share data within and across organizations. APIs are all around us.

To understand the actual role of the API, let's look at a simple analogy: you are hungry, so go to a hotel to enjoy a good meal, but go to a restaurant to sit there is not for your purpose. You must order food through an assistant (or waiter). Here we can say that the server is an API.

An API (application programming interface) put simply is a way for one piece of software to interact/communicate with another, often to ask it to do something for you, or to tell you something about itself. An API provides the framework and language which each of the pieces of software need to use to communicate.