What is API and Why Is It Important?

API (Application Programming Interface software) is a set of

instructions, standards or requirements that enables a software or app to
employ features/services of another app, platform or device for better
services. In short, it’s something that lets apps communicate with each
other.

For example, when we hit the ‘Connect Facebook’ button on Candy

Crush, it does not ask us to enter our Facebook account details. Rather, it
accesses the data from the Facebook server and lets us enjoy playing – all
thanks to API.

An API is the base of all the apps that deal with data or enable
communication between two products or services. It empowers a mobile
application or platform to share its data with other apps/platforms and
ease the user experience without involving the developers. On the top of
it, APIs eliminate the need to build a similar program or platform from
scratch; you can use the existing one or some other app/platform. Because
of these factors, both app developers and business leaders focus on the
API development process.

Terminologies of API development

a) API Key: When an API request through a header or parameter to
recognize the requester, the authorized code passed into the request is
said to be an API Key.

b) Endpoint: When an API interacts with another system, one end of the
communication channel is termed as Endpoint.

c) JSON: JavaScript Object Notion or JSON is said to be a data format used

for APIs request parameters and response body.
d) GET: The RESTful application program interface’s HTTP method of
obtaining resources is called GET.

e) POST: It is the RESTful API’s HTTP method for building resources.

f) OAuth: It is basically an Open standard authorization framework that

renders access from the user’s side without directly sharing the
credentials.

g) REST: REST (Representational State Transfer) is a kind of

programming architectural implementation meant to enhance the
efficiency of communication between the two devices/systems. It is
light-weighted and based on the idea of making a particular data
available only when requested by sharing references to the data instead
of the entire copy of the data itself. The systems enforced on this
architecture are said to be ‘RESTful’ systems, and the most
overwhelming example of RESTful systems is the World Wide Web.

h) SOAP: SOAP or Simple Object Access Protocol is a messaging protocol

for sharing structured information in the execution of web services in
computer networks. It works with XML information set and application
layer protocols (like HTTP and SMTP) for message format and message
negotiation & transmission, respectively.

i) Latency: Latency is defined as the total time taken by API interface in

the process from the request to the response.

j) Rate-Limiting: The term API Rate-limiting refers to the process of

defining the rate at which an end user can access the APIs. In other
words, it means restricting the number of requests a user can hit to an
API per time.

k) API Throttling: The process of regulating the usage of APIs by users

during a particular time period is called Throttling. This can be used for
API limiting. For example, you set the limit of 1000 API requests per day.
When the user hit the 1001 request, the server will send 429 messages
as HTTP status to the end user along with the message, “Too many
Requests”.

Working of API
Suppose you opened some XYZ app/website to book a flight. You filled
the form – you entered the departure and return date, city, flight, and
other relevant details – and submitted. Within a fraction of seconds, a list
of flights appears on the screen along with the price, timings, seat
availability, and other details. How does this actually happen?

To provide such stringent data, the platform sent a request to the

airline’s website to access their database and get relevant data via API
interface. The website responded with the data which API
Integration delivered to the platform and the platform displayed it on the
screen.

Here, the flight booking app/platform and airline’s website act as

endpoints while API as the intermediate streamlining the data sharing
process. When talking about communicating the endpoints, the API
works in two ways, namely: REST and SOAP.
Though both the methods bring effective results, a mobile app
development company prefer REST over SOAP since SOAP APIs are
heavy and platform-dependent.

Tools for API Development (like a

PRO..)
While there are a plethora of API design tools and technologies equipped
into the process of creating an API, the popular API
development technologies and tools for developing APIs for developers
are:
a) Apigee: It is a Google’s API management provider that assists the
developers and entrepreneurs to triumph at digital transformation by re-
establishing towards an API Integration approach.

b) APIMatic and API Transformer: These are other popular tools for
API development. They offer sophisticated automatic generation tools to
build top-quality SDKs and code snippets from API specific formats and
transform them into other specification formations, such as RAML, API
Blueprint, etc.
c) API Science: This tool is primarily used for evaluating the
performance of both internal APIs and external APIs.

d) API Serverless Architecture: Products built in serverless

architecture assist mobile app developers in designing, building,
publishing and hosting APIs with the help of a cloud-based server
infrastructure.

e) API-Platform: This is one of the open-source PHP frameworks that is

apt for web API development.

f) Auth0: It is an identity management solution used to authenticate and

authorize APIs.

g) ClearBlade: It is an API management provider for embracing the IoT

technology into your process.

h) GitHub: This open-source git repository hosting service lets the

developers manage code files, pull requests, version control, and
commenting that are distributed across the group. It also let them save
their code in private repositories.
i) Postman: It is basically an API toolchain that empowers the
developers to run, test, document, and evaluate the performance of their
API.

j) Swagger: It is an open-source framework which is used for

API development software. Big technology giants such as GettyImages
and Microsoft use Swagger. Although the world is full of APIs, there is
still a major gap in utilizing the perks of API technology. While some APIs
make integration to the app a breeze, other turn it into a nightmare
Must-Have Features of an Efficient
API
Below are a few features of API that you should consider for building a
secure mobile application:

a) Modification timestamps/Search by criteria: The foremost API

feature that an app should have is Modification timestamps/Search by
criteria. An API should let the users search data based on different
criteria, like a date. This is because it’s the changes (update, edit and
delete) that we consider just after the first initial data synchronization.

b) Paging: Many times, it happens that we do not want to see the

complete data changed, but just a glimpse of it. In such a scenario, the
API should be capable of determining how much data to display in one go
and at what frequency. It should also inform the end user about the no. of
pages of data remaining.
c) Sorting: To ensure that the end user receives all the pages of data one-
by-one, the API should empower the users to sort data as per the time of
modification or some other condition.

d) JSON Support/ REST: Though not compulsory, it is good to consider

your API to be RESTful (or providing JSON support(REST)) for
an effective API development. The REST APIs are stateless, light-
weighted and let you retry the upload mobile app process if it fails. This
is quite tough in the case of SOAP. Besides, JSON’s syntax resembles that
of most programming languages, which make it easy for a mobile app
developer to parse it into any other language.

e) Authorization via OAuth: It is again necessary that your application

program interface authorizes via OAuth since it is faster than other
methods – you just need to click on a button and it’s done.
In short, the processing time should be minimum, response time good
and security level high. It is of paramount importance to put efforts into
the API development best practices for securing your application, after
all, it deals with a heap of data.
Best Practices for Building the Right
API

a) Use Throttling: App Throttling is a great practice to consider for

redirecting overflow of traffic, backup APIs and safeguarding it from DoS
(Denial of Service) attacks.
b) Consider your API gateway as Enforcer: While setting up throttling
rules, application of API keys or OAuth, the API gateway must be
considered as the enforcement point. It should be taken as a cop that lets
only right users get access to the data. It should empower you to encrypt
the message or edit confidential information, and thereby, analyze and
manage how your API is being used.

c) Allow overriding HTTP method: Since some proxies only support

GET and POST methods, you need to let your RESTful API override the
HTTP method. For doing so, employ the custom HTTP Header X-HTTP-
Method-Override.

d) Evaluate the APIs and infrastructure: In the current time, real-time

analysis is possible to get, but what if the API server is suspected to have
memory leaks, draining CPU or other such issues? To consider such
situations, you can’t keep a developer at duty. However, you can perform
this easily via using numerous tools available in the market, like AWS
cloudwatch.

e) Ensure security: You must ensure that your API technology is secure
but not at the cost of user-friendliness. If any user spends more than 5
minutes on authentication then it means that your API is far from being
user-friendly. You can use token-based authentication to make your API
secure.

f) Documentation: Last but not the least, it is profitable to create an

extensive documentation for an API for mobile apps that lets other
mobile app developers easily understand the whole process and utilize
the information for offering better user experience. In other words, a
good API documentation in the process of effective API development will
lessen the project implementation time, project cost and boost the API
technology efficiency.
API Development Cost
On average, it costs $20,000 to build a relatively simple API. This figure
assumes that you’re building a secure, documented, fully-featured API
with the services of an experienced API software developer working with
a reputed API development company.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT API

DEVELOPMENT

Q. What is REST API development and SOAP API?

A. REST (Representational State Transfer) API is a software architectural

style that describes a complete set of constraints to be employed for
building Web services. Whereas, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
is a protocol much complex by adding more standards than REST, such
as security

Q. How do I make a good RESTful API?

A. Making a good RESTful API is easier when you follow these practices:-
1. Use Throttling
2. Considering your API Gateway as Enforcer
3. Allowing overriding HTTP method
4. Making a proper documentation
5. Determine the APIs and infrastructure
Q. What is API in software development?

A. API (Application Programming Interface) is a collection of

instructions, and requirements that let a software or mobile application
utilize the features/services of other applications, platform or devices for
exceptional services.
There are basically different types of API:-
• Web service APIs
• WebSocket APIs
• Library-based APIs
• Object remoting APIs
• Class-based APIs
• Hardware APIs, etc.

Q. What is JSON API?

A. JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is an encoding scheme created to

eradicate the need for an ad-hoc code for each app to interact with
servers in a particular manner.