An application programming interface, commonly abbreviated API, is a defined set of rules and protocols that lets one piece of software request services or data from another without either program needing to know the other's internal workings. The term dates to early computing literature describing how a program's own subroutines could be called by other programs, but the modern web API, delivered over the internet using protocols such as HTTP, emerged only around 2000, when companies including Salesforce and eBay began publishing interfaces that let outside developers build directly on their platforms, and computer scientist Roy Fielding's 2000 doctoral dissertation formalized the REST architectural style that became the dominant way such APIs are designed. Web APIs subsequently became the standard mechanism by which independent software systems, from mobile apps to cloud services, exchange data and functionality across the internet.
Facts
SignificanceThe web API is now the most common meaning of the term API. 1 FAQs
Is a web API the same thing as an API?
A web API is one kind of API, and it is now the most common meaning of the term.
Not exactly. API is the general term, and a web API is one kind of API, the kind delivered over the internet. The web API is now the most common meaning of the term API, which is why the two words are often used as if they were the same.
Connections
Sources
1. API, Wikipedia
History, first recorded use of the term
The term application program interface (without an -ing suffix) is first recorded in a paper called Data structures and techniques for remote computer graphics presented at an AFIPS conference in 1968.
History, web APIs
The web API is now the most common meaning of the term API.
In Group: Software Development Tools and Interfaces, Lead paragraph
is a connection between computers or between computer programs
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