Have you ever heard these phrases during your various encounters?
"No, but the future is all about APIs now."
"Yeah, but you know, I work in APIs, so I'm kind of a cool person."
"On my Debian server, I set up a cron job that grabs data via an API so I can do some data mining on it."
But have you ever wondered what they actually are? Seen by some as the key to success in the IT world and by others as an incomprehensible acronym, APIs are everywhere today.
Do you fall into the latter category? Fear not, this article is here to give you a quick introduction to what an API is so you can shine in social settings with your newfound knowledge!
Are you ready? Let’s go!
First of all, even though both are trendy, don't confuse an API with an IPA—one is a software tool, and the other is a type of bitter beer. Developers (and beer lovers alike) tend to stick with English acronyms.
Wait, you spirited writer, that’s still an incomprehensible acronym! Wouldn't you like to give us a concrete example?
Thanks for the suggestion, enthusiastic reader. That’s a great idea!
In practical terms, an API is a toolkit that allows one piece of software to interact with another in a simple way. But let’s use a metaphor to better understand how it works. Imagine that you, the reader, are a piece of software. Now, imagine that your washing machine is also a piece of software. The API is what allows you to use the washing machine's services simply. Get it? Well done! In this example, the API represents the buttons! The buttons allow you to use the washing machine without having to mess with electrical wires to start the right cycle, which, ultimately, would have made the drum spin so fast that it would have flown out of the machine and smashed Grandma Nicole’s entire porcelain egg collection... Which has NEVER happened to me... Anyway...
Hmm... I think I understand a bit better, but how does it look in the world of computing?
Well, a very well-known example of an API in use is social media posts embedded on third-party websites.
Whoa
Don't worry, it's not complicated! When you're on social media (let's say Facebook), you see a list of posts. Well, you can see those same posts on other websites, looking exactly the same! Did the developers of those sites have fun copying Facebook's database? Are they hackers? Not at all—they're simply using the API that Facebook provides. They just ask Facebook to give them the post content, the name of the person who posted it, and so on.
Oh, so that means the API allows you to retrieve content available on Facebook?
Yes, and that's not all!
There's more? That's fascinating!
Indeed! Imagine you click the like button under a post; how does Facebook know the post has been liked? Through the API! The site tells Facebook, "Someone wants to like this post," and then Facebook does a bunch of things to figure out who wants to like it, whether the person is allowed to like it, and so on.
So, to sum up, the developers of the site where you see your post "just" have to send simple requests to Facebook, and then Facebook does all the heavy lifting and reports back on whether it worked. So, a simple request from one piece of software to another allows for complex actions.
Oh... uh, okay. I think I get it. But you use an API for Soliguide. How does it work for you?
That's a great question! We share our database of social service organizations. Basically, other sites ask us, "Heeey, we'd like a list of organizations that offer hot meals in Brittany," and we send them back the list, which we've already processed—for example, by removing any closed locations.
More info on the Solidarity API
