What are the different types of APIs, and how are they used? This next generation of devices, which includes Fitbit, Nest, Alexa, can send and receive data, content, media, and other digital resources, further changing the way we interact with the world around us. Phase 5: APIs for connected devicesĪround 2010, some developers began using APIs to connect everyday objects-such as cameras, thermostats, speakers, microphones, and sensors-to the cloud. These API-first companies played an essential role in creating the blueprint for how APIs are delivered today. Instagram did not initially provide an API, but it began work on one in early 2011 in response to user demand. Instagram then launched its photo-sharing iPhone application in October 2010, and it had one million users just three months later. The ability to carry the web in our pockets radically changed how we live-and spurred a massive investment in mobile applications that are powered by APIs.įor instance, Twilio launched its API-as-a-product platform in 2007, which allowed developers to make and receive phone calls from any cloud application. The world was introduced to Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android in 2007. Both S3 and EC2 continue to play an essential role in application development today. Just six months later, Amazon released Amazon Elastic Compute (EC2), which enabled developers to use web APIs to deploy infrastructure that would power the next generation of applications. S3 is a basic storage service in which resources are accessible via API and CLI, and its pay-as-you-go model provides a cost-efficient way for organizations to monetize digital assets in the online economy. In 2006, Amazon introduced Amazon Simple Storage (S3), which marked yet another turning point in the history of APIs. This API played a crucial role in establishing Facebook as one of the most popular social networks in the world. For instance, Facebook launched version 1.0 of its API in August of 2006, which allowed developers to access Facebook users’ friends, photos, events, and profile information. While these APIs weren’t as intrinsically linked to revenue as their commercial predecessors, they nevertheless provided significant value to their organizations. Phase 2: Social media APIsĪ shift in the API landscape occurred in the mid-2000s, as a new group of companies-such as Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter-realized that APIs could change the way we share information with one another. This era of APIs was defined by Salesforce, eBay, and Amazon, and these companies continue to dominate the API playing field today. In the early 2000s, web APIs emerged as a new method for emerging startups to not only make products and services available online, but to also enable partners and third-party resellers to extend the reach of their platforms. The history of APIs since that period can be roughly broken down into the following five phases: Phase 1: Commercial APIs APIs have been around for decades, with modern web APIs first taking shape in the early 2000s. In order to fully understand the role that APIs play in our lives, it’s important to understand how they have evolved. For instance, if a user wants to see all of the products at an e-commerce store, the API client will send a GET request to the /products endpoint. Endpoints are Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) that provide access to specific resources in a database. The API client is responsible for assembling requests in response to user actions and sending them to the appropriate API endpoint. Once that metaphor makes sense, you can go a level deeper and start reviewing the different components of an API, starting with the API client. The kitchen staff is like the API server because it creates the order according to the customer's specifications and gives it to the waiter, who then delivers it to the customer. The waiter is like an API, receiving the customer's order and translating it into easy-to-follow instructions for the kitchen-sometimes using specific codes or abbreviations that the kitchen staff will recognize. In this metaphor, the customer is like the user, who tells the waiter what she wants. In order to better understand this process, it can be useful to think of APIs like restaurants. APIs work by sharing data between applications, systems, and devices.
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