What is an API?

Motivation to code by Hannah Wei

An API is called as Application Programming Interface (API). But that is a vast field to define software technology and goes out of our scope. We are limiting our today’s discussion to web APIs.

What is a Website?

A website is a page that is served to its Client. You are reading this blog on your computer. Your computer is the Client that is connected rearward to a Server over the internet.

Client Request

https://www.zakatlists.com/blogpost?ser=138

// This is the current url / website link of this page.

As the Client makes the request over its browser, or say types above url in the url bar, it connects over a series of routers to the Server. For example, this website is deployed on Heroku Servers, in USA. So your computer has forwarded a request to the Server placed in USA seeking a response.

Server Response

This is a blog I got from Heroku.

// Above is a dummy response you will recieve from server.

Heroku Server has responded over the internet to this query with an html document. HTML, hypertext Markup Language, is one kind of response received from Heroku Server. At times it is JSON, sometimes it is XML and other times it is a plain old text sentence telling you, server died 404, invalid URL or you are in the wrong territory.

Explanation

All the queries generated over internet, seeking a response from a Server, are functional due to Web APIs protocol. It is a procedure to send and receive data between world wide Servers.

In order to give you further clarity on the subject consider following demonstration.

An Example

We will ask zakatlists to give details about its developer using the following code.

Client Request

https://www.zakatlists.com/developer

Click here to Make a Request

Server Response

[Response Text]

// Here we will see a text response from the server

Another way

You can paste the url in your browser to see the Server response, Click here, If you are confused.

Summary

A website is built over the internet. Internet transports your information between Clients and the Servers. Client is your computer. Serveris somebody’s else’s computer installed with a slightly different set of instructions at another place.

We did not discuss Server side coding in this post. We will do it, some other day. But this post is your one baby step to understanding a vast and beautiful field of web development.

This is it

Now you are ready to start coding. You can pick one of the following courses that will guide you to creating content that is one click away from your family, friends and community.

Buy this course on Udemy to understand basic web development by Rob Percieval. I started learning to code from this course.

If you already know basic web development, I highly recommend this course on Udemy, to understand Web API development in Node JS.

If you can’t afford to buy yet, you can make use of w3schools to understand all there is in the field of web development.

Please do not waste your time, pick one course, write good notes, 1 hour everyday after your morning ritual and start earning sitting at your home.