You are currently viewing System design: API’S, features and use case
Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

System design: API’S, features and use case

Loading

Outline

Introduction

This is the third blog of the system design series which talks about API’S, features and its use case. Before that i will urge readers to read the below two blogs and watch the below two videos on them

Blogs to read

System design Overview

System design Overview part 2

YouTube videos to view

You tube Video on System design Overview

You tube Video on System design Overview part 2

In this particular blog, one can learn what is api and what are features and where it is used in the practical sense. 

API, features and use case

API stands for the application programming interface. Application means it is an application which could be public, private, web or sdk. It is called programming because it acts as an interface between two different pieces of codes. It is called interface because it makes two codes interact with each other.

Features

  • Abstraction: It means when you run the api, one will get the results without knowing the back code. One need not to worry about code change. One needs to use the api without worrying about anything.
  • Communication: With the use of API’S, one can interact with different codes which can be written in the same language or in the different language.
  • Platform Agnostic

Different types of API

  • Private: This api is restricted to the specific application and not open to the public for example api for any specific app like for payment.
  • Public: It is open to the public. Example for such is google maps. Anyone can use it.
  • Web based: API like web speech or audio. 

Use case

  • To share an image or video on the social networking websites api works at the backend.
  • To use text to speech or speech to text features offered by companies, one will use them through api.
  • Weather forecast api enables one to see current weather data or daily forecast weather.
  • Finance api allows you to download the historical data of different stocks. One such example is yahoo finance api

Conclusion

In a nutshell, this small but effective article explains how apis are used for communication and why it is easy to use. Light is thrown on the features, types and use cases. In the end some discussion is done on weather, finance and speech api under use case section.  Check its video from below

Leave a Reply