Creating an API-Centric Web Application

Introduction

API?

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, API is short for Application Programming Interface. According to Wikipedia:

An application programming interface (API) is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other. An API may include specifications for routines, data structures, object classes, and variables.

API Visualization

Image courtesy of http://blog.zoho.com

In simpler terms, an API refers to a set of functions built into an application, which can be used by other applications (or by itself, as we’ll see later), to interact with the application. An API is a great way to expose an application’s functionality to external applications safely and securely, since all functionality that these external applications can do is limited with what functionality is exposed in the API.

What’s an “API-Centric” Web Application?

An API-Centric Web Application is a web application that basically executes most, if not, all its functionality through API calls.

An API-Centric Web Application is a web application that basically executes most, if not, all its functionality through API calls. For example, if you were to log in a user, you would send his credentials to the API, and the API would return to you a result saying if the user provided the correct user-password combination.