When you think of APIs, what do you think of? REST?
Many people assume that whenever I talk about APIs, I am talking about REST.
Let's revisit API 101:
Application Programming Interface (API) is an interface that defines the interaction between different software systems. It mainly defines how one system will communicate with another, which protocol it will use, what convention to follow etc.
*What Is the Purpose of Having APIs? *
APIs are simplifying programming by abstracting the complexity of underlying implementation and only providing objects or actions that the developer or consumer needs.
REST: (Representational State Transfer) is one of the architectural styles that provides some architectural constraints. If your API applies those constraint then you can call API as RESTFul API.
However, REST is one of the architectures that is widely adopted by industries in comparison to SOAP and GraphQL. One of the reasons why we at Apyhub choose REST for our users, is to implement services most simply and efficiently.
Conclusion
I hope it is clear now that APIs are not equal to only REST. So choose your APIs carefully that suit your or your organization's requirements and do not restrict yourself to thinking about APIs as RESTFul only
Top comments (2)
Great start!
It would be nice to consider various options for implementing the APIs. Also consider the performance, in mind.
Here's one option, i.e. GRPC. Reference - what-is-grpc
API per se it's a extremely generic term. It's not always related to HTTP communication.
Even Java names its standard libraries with "API", like the Stream API or Collections API.