What is an API?

[Ken. A Sandoval Ruiz]

Hi,

I was wondering if someone can tell me what's an API?

[Scott Michaud]

API means "application programming interface". Basically, it's the
functions and data structures that some platform exposes to allow
software to be built on top of it. How these functions and data
structures are /actually/ handled can vary by implementation, just as
long as the data going in and out of the API behaves as expected
(depending on how rigid the API's specification is).

A good example is Web API. Every web browser is coded very differently,
but every website should behave in roughly the same way. Some things are
less rigid, like intricacies in how fonts are rendered, while others are
very strict, like the way a container size is calculated.

Programming is all about transforming data from one form to another.
APIs are like the language rules that an entity defines to communicate
with their software.

Hope this helps!

On 6/3/2017 5:18 PM, Ken. A Sandoval Ruiz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if someone can tell me what's an API?

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[Chris Mills]

Thanks for jumping in Scott!

In addition, there’s some useful material on what APIs are in the intro article of my client-side APIs module:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/JavaScript/Client-side_web_APIs/Introduction

HTH,

Chris Mills
MDN content lead || Mozilla
developer.mozilla.org || MDN
cmi...@mozilla.com || @chrisdavidmills

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