What is an API?
A web API is a web interface for software where two systems meet and interact.
- remote APIs that use the HTTP protocol
Just like a user interacts with an application through its UI, a program can interact with another application through its programming interface.
- UI provides fields and buttons that can evolove as you use them, but an API provides functions that may need input data or that may return output data as feedback.
- These functions let other apps interact with the app to retrieve or send info, or trigger actions
- Communicate with HTTP
Public and private APIs
Whether an API is public or private is determined by who consumes it:
- Public APIs are provided as a service or as a product by others
- You don’t build, install, or run public APIs
- They are available to anyone that is willing to accept the terms and conditions of the 3rd party supplier
- Private APIs is an API that you build for yourself
- Only applications created by you or people in your org use it
- You are both the consumer and provider of the private API
- A partner API is when you expose some of your APIs to customers or selected partners