What are APIs used for?

Modern Application Programming Interfaces are the default way to share data between systems and applications. Developers and non-developers can use APIs in a wide variety of ways, as you are about to find out. Here is a look at how APIs are most popularly being used today.

APIs Are Used to Power Desktop Applications

Desktop applications have evolved with the growth of the internet. Today, they are more like web and mobile apps because they rely on real-time API connections to send, store, and receive data, such as media and content. APIs also make connectivity between an application and the cloud possible. APIs are now a crucial element of how desktop applications are developed, operated, and supported.

APIs Are Used for Obtaining Specific Data

Whatever field you need data for, you can probably find an API to use. For example, you can use an API to look up and validate addresses to ensure streets and postal addresses actually exist. Businesses can make use of such APIs for a variety of purposes. But there are many APIs available for such tasks, so it is best to check out lists of address lookup and validation APIs before choosing the right one for your purposes. One of the best is the Address Verify and Geocode API. With it, you can access all of the transactional functionality that exists in the core engine to process address validation, look up addresses, and geocode. Other specific types of APIs include ones that provide data and insights into the status of COVID-19, ones for weather forecast data, ones for stock market data, and ones for movie and television data.

APIs Are Used for Most Web Applications

Virtually every website and app now relies on APIs to obtain data for each web page. Many APIs are used to transmit information from multiple domains to be used on a single web page. If you need to understand how a website or app receives daily data, an API will be your best friend. Also, a growing number of SaaS platforms require APIs, which means a number of integration platforms as a service have also increased. Anyone can now migrate data, media, content, and other resources between services that use API integrations.

APIs Make Mobile Apps Possible

People started demanding more mobile applications after Apple released the iPhone in 2007, and Google released the Android phone in 2008. That led to APIs being used to power the growing number of mobile apps appearing on the market. More than a decade later, APIs are now the vital components of mobile applications. They provide the data, media, content, and other resources that phone apps depend on. In practice, that means APIs can do things like delivering games to your phone, provide automatic updates, and find the nearest restaurant. Mobile phones make a plethora of APIs call each other every day over cellular networks to keep your location, messages, payments, calendar, and other crucial resources in sync with the cloud.