We are living in an incredibly fast-paced world, where nearly every phrase seems to be abbreviated to save time. Whether purely social (LOL, OMG, TY) or strictly business (ROI, CTR, CPA), shorthand has become ubiquitous in the language of business.
But what about API? Perhaps lesser known — but no less powerful — this acronym is the driving force behind virtually all social platforms. Here is everything you need to know about these three little letters that pack a whole lot of powerful punch.
What is an API?
API stands for application programming interface. As it is a rather complicated concept, let’s break it down by looking at each of its parts.
If you have a smartphone, you are well acquainted with what applications are, i.e., the tools, games, social networks and other software that we use every day. Programming is how engineers create all the software that make our lives so much easier. An interface is a common boundary shared by two applications or programs that allow both to communicate with one another.
So an API is essentially a way for programmers to communicate with a certain application.
API – from a technical perspective
Aistis Zenkevičius, CTO at Host1Plus, offers further insights into the underpinnings of API term.
“API is a precise specification written by providers of a service that programmers must follow when using that service,” he says. “It describes what functionality is available, how it must be used and what formats it will accept as input or return as output. In recent years, the term API colloquially is used to describe both the specification and service itself.”
API analogy
Every time you want to access a set of data from an application, you have to call the API. But there is only a certain amount of data the application will let you access, so you have to communicate to the operator in a very specific language—a language unique to each application.
To help visualize this concept, imagine an API as the middleman between a programmer and an application. This middleman accepts requests and, if that request is allowed, returns the data. The middleman also informs programmers about everything they can request, exactly how to ask for it and how to receive it.
Things that make our API awesome
Our goal from the very beginning is to make user experience the best possible in the market and that’s exactly where our in-house developed API steps in.
Code samples
Our API will come for users with documentation and code samples in different programming languages.
Manage your VMs
Everyone who will use our in-house developed API will be able to start, stop, reboot their VMs, get all the important information on any VM they have, such as CPU, memory, bandwidth usage, active volumes, list available backups and view currently used and available templates.
Schedule & manage Backups
API users will be able to see what backups they have and when will they be performed. In addition, they will be able to manually do a backup whenever they want, delete unwanted backups, restore from a backup or get additional backup info. Users will also be able to schedule hourly, daily, monthly backups via the API.
View your Orders and Products
Everyone using our API will be able to list all their orders and products, view product details, create new orders and inspect every order in detail. This feature will be extremely useful for resellers as they will be able to implement our API to their existing monitoring and managing systems to ease up the workflow.
What is an API call?
Whenever a developer or tool requests information from an API, they need to call (or, more technically speaking, create a request to) that API. Many open APIs have strict limits on how many times people can make a call in order to limit traffic and not overwhelm the API with requests.
Why are APIs important for business?
Do you use an application that tells you what the current traffic looks like? Or how about an app that shows when the next bus will be at your stop? Most tools like these rely on open APIs to run and pull the most accurate data. Those are both good examples of how open APIs might help you in your everyday life, but here is how they can help you in business.
- Businesses create apps with APIs
There are many businesses out there that build software and tools that rely on pulling data from open APIs to help streamline a business process in some new way. Our API lets you implement our functionality to your projects.
- Business people use those apps
APIs are important for business because they allow programmers to build amazing tools that help us do our jobs more effectively. A good example is keyword tool that accesses Google’s search API to suggest keywords your business should target.
- Businesses rely on APIs
APIs are also important for the businesses that provide them, because third-party developers build out applications that further the use of the company’s core product. This saves the API provider both time and money. For example, before Reddit came out with its own mobile app, it relied on other tools created by companies looking to monetize that work.
Learn to Use APIs
With the growing popularity of websites that teach people to code, learning to use an API can be done from the comfort of your own home. Follow our latest news and be the first one to try out API documentation created for developers by developers. Additional tutorials and knowledge base articles will also be included!
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