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Wachira
Wachira

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APIs vs SDKs

APIs (Application Programming Interface)

They are all about communications to other apps, they are like a bridge.

What makes them useful?

  • Communication: allows communication between apps
  • Abstraction: gets you what saving one the need to know the logic behind
  • Standardized: there are industry standards that define an API e.g. SOAP, REST(Representational State Transfer), and GRAPH

REST API Request Requirements

  • Operation: POST, GET, PATCH e.t.c
  • Parameters: Files, JSON, XML
  • Endpoint: The URL for the service/app you want to talk to

All REST requests have a response back from the service or app which can be a result, status, or empty content.

SDK (Software Development Kit)

SDK is basically a tool or code that makes API calls for you, an example you SDK could hold methods that one could basically call a payment gateway transaction by either passing certain arguments and get results from the initialized transaction.

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