What is an API?

API is the acronym for “Application Programming Interface” – a set of rules and definitions that allows software applications to communicate with each other.

Like a user interface allows a human user to communicate with a computer, an application programming interface connects computers to each other without human interaction.

An API can be described as a kind of “messenger” that requests data from a server and delivers the response back to the application.

What is API Integration?

When people mention APIs, they are usually talking about web services.

Every web service is an API, but not every API is a web service.

An API integration is the connection between two or more systems or applications via their APIs, that enables those systems to exchange data.

Types of API Protocols

• SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is an API protocol that uses XML that sends and receives data through SMTP and HTTP. SOAP APIs are ideal for sharing information between apps or software, independent of their environment or language. SOAP provides a high level of security and is frequently used for payment gateways, financial services and identity management. However, as it only uses XML it is verbose and requires more bandwidth than other formats.
  
  
• REST (Representational State Transfer) is a set of web API architecture principles, as opposed to a protocol like SOAP, with a certain number of architectural constraints. Web APIs that comply with these architectural constraints are called RESTful APIs, although most of the APIs referred to as “RESTful” don’t fully meet the standards for REST architecture and are actually just “HTTP interfaces”. RESTful systems support messaging in different formats, such as plain text, HTML, YAML, XML, and JSON. REST is easier to use and requires less coding as it makes data available through endpoints each endpoint is represented by a unique URL.
  
  
• GraphQL is a data query syntax created by Facebook (Meta), which also serves as an API query language. GraphQL is not protocol-bound but it can utilise HTTP like REST.
  One of its main advantages is that it only requires a single endpoint for fetching data.
  It allows the client to define the exact data it needs from multiple sources, so only one API call to request all needed data is needed. GraphQL uses a type system to describe data.

Below is an overview of the different types of API protocols:

Webhooks

More and more webapps are using a technology called webhooks.

Although APIs and webhooks have a similar function, webhooks work in the other direction.

Webhooks are essentially a subscription to receive data when a particular event happens, which means that you

do not actively have to request data.

While a traditional API integration needs to pull data from a server periodically, webhooks enable the webservice to push this data over at the instant something happens. The request that a webhook makes can either contain the data required for the integration to work or prompt the integration server to make a subsequent request to get the required data.

Examples of API integration:

• E-commerce sites:
  Online stores like Shopify access order management systems to import/export order data or any other type of data, such as product catalogues, stock levels and customer data.
  
  
• Payment gateways:
  API integration with Paypal enables online payments without giving the online store access to sensitive bank data. Background data transfer ensures verification of credit card/debit card details.
  
  
• BI tools:
  Google Data Studio converts sales and stock data into graphs for analysis and forecasts.
  
  
• Website analytics:
  Pull data from Google Analytics and collate with data from other systems.
  

Benefits of API integration

• Cloud connectivity: APIs enable integration so platforms and apps on the cloud can communicate seamlessly with modern or legacy systems.

• Innovation: APIs allow companies to connect with new business partners, offer new services or access new markets.

• Security: As intermediary between your data and external servers APIs provide extra security which can be increased by API gateways, encryptions, API Keys and logins.

• Conformity: Many online services mandate the use of APIs to integrate leverage their functionality.