API

tags :

Acronym #

ref Application Programming Interface (API)

API vs REST #

1. API vs REST API: Structure While structurally, most of the APIs follow the application-application format, REST API strictly operates on the web concept of *Client and Server. The Client and Server are separated from one another, giving more flexibility.

2. API vs REST API: Design Generally, APIs are lightweight architectures that are designed for gadgets constrained to devices like smartphones. In contrast, REST APIs communicate over systems, making it a complex architecture.

3. API vs REST API: Protocol The primary goal of API is to standardize data exchange between web services. Depending on the type of API, the choice of protocol changes. On the other hand, REST API is an architectural style for building web services that interact via an HTTP protocol. Although REST API was formulated in 2000 by computer scientist Roy Fielding, it remains the gold standard for public APIs.

4. API vs REST API: Support Most of the API are easy to implement as they do not face statelessness. In contrast, REST API gets executed even if users do not know the function names and the parameters in a specific order.

5. API vs REST API: Uniform Interface Not many API decouples the client from a server or one application from another.

   • REST API adheres to the principles of a uniform interface and forbids the use of self or multiple interfaces within an API.
   • Hypermedia connections should ideally be used to distribute a single interface.
   • It should also ensure that a similar piece of data (for example, a user’s name or email address) belongs to only one uniform resource identifier (URI). As a result, regardless of the initial request, all API requests for the same resources should look the same.

6. API vs REST API: Scalability While scalability is an issue for general APIs, REST API has a layered structure, making REST API modular and more flexible to achieve scalability.

Conclusion #

API is a bigger umbrella, and REST API is a unique type of API prevalent among mobile and cloud applications. No API is void of disadvantages, but new developers find REST API difficult because it fails to maintain the state within sessions. As modern APIs have emerged as a product that adheres to specified standards and specific audiences, businesses have improved their user interfaces quickly.