Week 12: Understanding APIs

   For this week, we had our lecture on APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Our lecturer introduced APIs as fundamental tools in modern software development for enabling communication between different software applications. APIs act like middlemen through which developers access functionalities, data, or services of other systems in a standard, structured manner. This ability thus makes it easier to construct more inter-related and efficient applications by abstracting the complexity of system integrations.

    The lecture made a great case for why APIs are important for interoperability and productivity in the development of software. Our lecturer explained how APIs act as bridges through which different applications, platforms, or devices can easily communicate with one another, even if they were built entirely on different technologies. This concept was explained by real-time examples, such as how APIs provided by social media sites allow the integration of sharing features into external websites, or how payment gateways enable a site like e-commerce to make payments securely.

    In this paper, several types of APIs are discussed, focusing mainly on REST (Representational State Transfer) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). REST APIs were described as lightweight and are often used because of their scalability and simplicity with standard HTTP methods, including GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. SOAP APIs, meanwhile, were described as strong and employed enterprise-level systems, which depend on XML for message formatting, thus having strict protocols in the exchange of data.

This week's topic

    After the lecture, we had seat work and a group activity to help us memorize and understand the API concepts. The seatwork consisted of individual tasks, which included answering questions that had questions related to the concepts given, like the definition of APIs, uses of REST and SOAP, and their applications in the real world. This is where we reviewed the main points from the lecture and consolidated them. The group activity, however, was the fun part of the session. We were divided into teams and given a list of companies that each is known for its API offerings, such as Google, Twitter, and Spotify. Our task is to identify the APIs provided by these companies and analyze their purpose, functionality, and technical details. Specifically, each of us had to find out what services each API offers in terms of service that can be attained, including retrieving user data, posting content, or integrating third-party tools.

Group Activity