“According to a report, API management market valuation has grown from $1.2 billion US dollars in 2018 to $5.1 US dollars in 2023, growing at 32.9% CAGR”< APIs, or Application Programming Interface, are significantly important today in many industries, including software development. They act as building blocks for a business, helping them better serve their customers and enhance their overall experience. For people still wondering what API is and how to build an API, don’t worry, this post is here to help you. This is a comprehensive guide about basics of APIs and how to create an API. The post covers other significant topics such as definition, types of APIs, and popular industries using APIs, followed by other important points.
“In simplest form – APIs are programs used to access third party services or programs”
APIs (or Application Programming Interface) is a set of protocols, functions, and tools that allow third party applications to interact with a platform. APIs usually access the features or data of an application, operating system, or service.
APIs are used for collaborating different pieces of software together to deliver business functionality effectively. It also allows greater data sharing to create a software ecosystem, communicate with each other, and thus deliver modern experiences to users.
APIs have become a mainstream component of modern applications and act like building blocks for a platform. There are different types of APIs available in the market, i.e. public, private etc, depending upon the user requirement. Let us discuss the major types of APIs available in the market –
“Fact – REST is the most popular API architecture among developers with an astonishing adoption rate of 93.4% “
Application Programming Interfaces are majorly divided into four types, namely –
Public APIs are available in market openly for everyone that offers them the access to a platform’s service. In other words, open APIs and all its features are open to public for developers and can be used without any restrictions or conditions. However, some Public APIs charge a subscription fee from users for using its features.
Some of the top public API examples include Google API, LinkedIn API, and Weather API.
Partner APIs are not openly available for everyone and you need to have an agreement with the API publisher to access it. Partner APIs are used by companies for software integration with their partners. Many companies also grant access to their APIs for extra income in exchange of features. Generally, API publisher has an on-boarding process for their partners with authenticated workflow.
Some of the most popular partner APIs are Amazon partner API, Airbnb Partner API, and eBay Partner APIs.
Private APIs are for internal use of a development team for improving their overall productivity, solutions, and business services. In other words, such APIs are externally exposed to anyone and the interface is only available to the API publisher’s team.
“Fact – Over 56% developers admitted that APIs help in building a better product”
Composite APIs integrate data APIs and other services together through API development. Such APIs are built using existing API services that can do multiple tasks in a single cell. Composite APIs enhance the overall performance and speed of the web interface.
Top banks and financial institutions use APIs to streamline customer & partner experience. The companies have invested significantly on banking as a Service API development to benefit their users on a large scale and take advantage of this innovative digital service. The banks are hiring mobile app development companies in India to build their private digital solutions.
Hospitals and other health systems are taking advantage of the medical innovation with private digital systems. These API based solutions allow these health institutes to access data and other important features from different sources of data.
Retail or Omni-channel in-store industry is also widely using the API based digital solutions these days to enhance customer’s shopping experience. Apart from this, such stores are also investing in building their own E-commerce stores by hiring top web development companies, like Konstant Infosolutions.
Building an API is a complex task and should be done by an expert only to work effectively. However, to guide you through the process, here is a step by step guide to creating an API:
The foremost basic step for creating an API is to understand your requirements, both non-functional & functional. Functional requirement is the business capability of your API, i.e. what it does for its users. Similarly, non-functional requirement is the service the API offers, including the security, performance, speed, controlled access, response time, etc.
Notably it is also essential to understand your audience and their needs. For instance, if you are developing a private API, then the audiences are either your engineers or employees. However, a public API needs to research a little extra to understand the user requirements.
The next step is to design the API and have architecture in the mind that fits user requirements of the engineers, users, and developers. An ideal API architecture takes care of the following 5 basic functionalities:
Once the design and the architecture are final & done, it is time to start coding the API. It is important to have the right tools for building an API in an efficient manner. Further, make sure to build one endpoint at a time, slowly adding the features you want, testing each one of them, and then writing a detailed documentation.
Standardize & define the responses for client to process, i.e. your API should return a successful response or an error. Further, API should handle errors and exceptions efficiently & return the right status code to the user
Usually, most publishers use tools to create an APIs and use existing resources to build its building blocks. The APIs interface is captured through a service description programming language. For instance, to describe a SOAP API, use WSDL, while you can use RAML or OAS for a RESTful API. Note that APIs can be built using several programming languages, REST & SOAP being the most popular ones.
Once developed, it’s time to test your API to ensure that everything is working as expected. There are several ways to test your API, including tools available in the market. You can do functionality test, unit test, integration test, loading test, security test, and many more. Below are some important tips to consider while testing your API:
Once the development and testing is done, it’s time to publish your API to production. Usually, APIs are hosted on API gateways, including cloud APIs and enterprise APIs. API gateways guarantee scalability, security, and performance of the API. Further, it is essential to offer clear documentation and publish it in API developer portal to improve API adoption. An effective API document explains use cases, API functions, security constraints, consumption plans, and other vital info.
Once deployed, make sure to monitor the API based on significant KPIs. Some of the popular KPIs include:
You can take feedback from users and implement their changes with the next update.
Search by criteria or Modification timestamps allow the user to search data based on different conditions or criteria, such as date or enabled/disabled. The feature is useful when the data is in large quantity and needs to be filtered out for easy access and understanding.
Paging means to decide how much data to be displayed in one go and at what frequency. When the database grows significantly, it becomes difficult to display it in one go and takes longer time to retrieve. However, make sure to inform the user about the data remaining through the number of pages. Pagination ensures a good response time, maximum safety, and minimizing processing time.
Further, sorting ensure that the user sees the required data as per his need, conditions, and modifications.
A cache strategy decreases the cost of your request by retrieving resources at better speed. Some of the most popular tools to build a cache strategy are Memcached and Redis. Cache allows the data to be stored in the memory data allowing faster data retrieving.
Authentication and authorization ensure high level identity security or verification of the right person to access the API features. Some of the most popular authentication tools are JWT, OAuth, or OAuth 2.
So this was all about building an API. Further, APIs have grown significantly in the market and are now an important part of the web development process. These APIs are used to improve the user experience and boost the company profit by leveraging the required technological connectivity. You can follow this guide if you are planning to build an API. Make sure to define your requirements clearly before jumping into the development part.
API in software development stands for Application Programming Interface and is a tool to exchange data between two software applications. It is a set of functions that allow other applications to interact with your software to boost the features or user experience.
API integration helps businesses enhance the user experience and offer better functionality to users by offering smooth communication. They help the applications to exchange data or functionalities between multiple third party apps, either for free or some price.
Some of the top API development languages are PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python, JavaScript, and Java.
Restful is an acronym for Representational State Transfer – It is an API interface that is used to exchange information or data safely on the internet.
Application Programming Interfaces (or APIs) make money by leveraging their features and functionalities to other applications or enterprises, either free or paid. Subscriptions or usage-based pricing are some of the most popular methods to monetize APIs.
Manish Jain is the co-founder and Managing Director at Konstant Infosolutions. He is responsible for the overall operations of the company and has played a major role in bringing Konstant up from its humble beginnings and, with his immense energy and drive, transforming it into a globally trusted name in IT solutions.
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