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Sanskar Goyal
Sanskar Goyal

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What is an API ?

If you are a novice web developer then you must have heard of APIs, here is a simple explanation of what this term means.

API is short for Application Programming Interface.


Let's look at an example.
In older times we had radios, right! They all had different functions but there was one thing which was common in each of them. The PLAY button. This button became so popular that later on it was used everywhere, even GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces).

That is a button API. An API is an interface for a coder, they don't have to code the functionality of that button completely. It's abstract!

For clicking PLAY and sending sound to speaker is using Web Audio API. While using 'strings' we are using String APIs.


When someone says that they have an API for a company, they have a Web based API. A web based API is basically like a TV remote, we send the request it does its MAGIC (function!) and comes back with the result.

To look for the API on a website, one can look in the footer or the menu to check out their APIs.



If you are still reading, I hope you gained something out of this blog and if you liked it, don't hesitate to join my community's discord server where we discuss things in a similar way!
Link : https://discord.gg/FG9qWMEAbA

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