How APIs Works: The Emerging Tech Crude Oil

If you wonder why when you search for a set of shoes on Google, and a few minutes later, you go on Facebook, and all you can see are sets of shoes from various vendors, even though you never search for those shoes on Facebook!

Something is happening under the hood that you don't know. It's called API economy. But, before we talk about API economy, let us first understand the concept of APIs and what they are made of.

What is API?

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a public persona for a company or a product; API as an enabler exposes business abilities and services.

What are the characteristics of APIs?

• We enjoy integrations from many platforms as a result of API flexibilities. APIs form a bridge for interactions between services, such as mainframe and databases and customer-facing services. With APIs, an organisation can share information with external developers, business associates, and other teams within the same organisation from a single database.
• APIs allow you to expose some parts of a program or service in a managed and protected environment. In other words, you can use APIs to share some portion of your application with other developers without releasing your entire App functions.
• Another excellent characteristic of API is that developers can combine and use multiple APIs from different providers to create new applications.
• The main essence of implementing An API is to allow independent functionalities; a high-quality API enables separate and independent functionalities while offering a complete set of capabilities for other developers or organisations to integrate and get the expected result.

History of APIs

Most computer programmers are aware of the concept of an API. In the past, APIs were referred to as predefined and published details. Mainly about what an application can do and what a programmer could build upon it (in other words, I make an application, what can other developers do with it?).

Details of API are commonly referred to as technical manuals. They are distributed as a binary runtime library with an associated license.

Talking about Binary Runtime, BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) applications are mobile programs that are created for Qualcomm's BREW platform. BREW is embedded directly into the mobile device's hardware and is used as an API to access the GSM or CDMA chipsets that use it.

Over the years, APIs grew based on technological advances (such as dynamic integration, network speed and security). As the business develops, these functions can be thought of as sensitive and consumable entities.

Cloud application developers today can develop high-value applications by combining available business services or APIs that are often made available by various API providers and discovered independently by application developers.

From the onset, APIs are cost-effective, and they provide immediate value to application developers. APIs also comes with a reputation of being reliable.

In no time, API will soon become the standard method of providing a specific ability within the mobile application development community (a perfect example is the location services that use Google Maps APIs).

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other companies are making APIs available for other businesses to use their product for a profit.

Conclusion

It will shock you that we can perform many bank transactions because of the various integrations through APIs.

For example, bank operators can get signals when a customer from Bank A uses the ATM (Automated Teller Machine) of Bank B; through APIs, both banks can reconcile and quickly debit your account.

On the other hand, you get your cash from the ATM. And if the transactions fail, the APIs handles the exceptions, and you get a reversal.

As I mentioned, APIs are becoming the big thing; make sure you learn the concept alongside your tech career to take full advantage.

In my next post, I will be talking about the concept of APIs, API economics and how to get started.