Introduction to Web APIs
Web APIs are a certain channel of data exchange between two different applications without human intervention. The implementation of an API follow the format of some specification, such as XML, REST, JSON, and so forth. Traditionally the model of APIs is that you have API Providers on one side and API Consumers on the other side. The format would be the shared language between the provider and consumer. One benefit of using APIs is to transfer information without wasting resources on fluff, this was really important years ago when internet bandwidth was slower and computer processing power was weaker.
HTTP Requests
The ability (for a server) to handle HTTP requests from clients.
HTTP Responses
The response a server would provide in response to request(s).
Web APIs
The whole catalog of server endpoints available for HTTP requests to be made.
- Building an APIs request
- API request builder
References
- History of APIs http://101.apievangelist.com/
- Some examples of API Data formats https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Data_formats