If you’re a working professional, you’ve probably heard your coworkers talk about , , , and other weird words like and . What the heck does it mean and what’s the difference between them? APIs Web Services endpoints 200 401 What‘s an API? An , or application program interface, is something that enables different apps to communicate with each other. A is a type of API that communicates over the internet. API Web Service Generally, when apps communicate with each other, there is an exchange of and . request response is asking for something Request is the answer to a request Response App A sends request to App B. App B sends response back to App A. Similar to requesting for something in real life, you may not get the response that you would like or expect. Sometimes you’re successful, and sometimes you’re not. An example of this would be Googling something. When you type something in the search engine and press enter, it performs an API request. Most of the time, Google returns a response back with millions of results, but sometimes it’s not able to find anything. As we will see in the following section, there are specific phrases that modern day techies use when they talk about APIs. Now you too, can be in the know! Requests : make a request. “Make / Fire an API call” : make a request to get data. “Make a GET request” : make a request to create data. “Make a POST request” : make a request to update data. “Make a PUT request” : the url e.g. ( ). “Endpoint” https://twitter.com/songthamtung : perform a request at the specified url. “Hit the endpoint” Response : The HTTP response code for Success. “200” : The HTTP response code for Redirect. “301” The HTTP response code for Bad Request. “400”: “ ”: The HTTP response code for Unauthorized. 401 The HTTP response code for Forbidden. “403": : The HTTP response code for Not Found. “404” : The HTTP response code for Internal Server Error. “500” : The HTTP response code for Timeout. “504” Authentication a way for apps to grant permission with the use of tokens. “OAUTH”: : a form of authentication, similar to username/password. “Token” : tokens can and do expire. If you’re getting a 401, consider refreshing your API token. “Refresh the token” General does their app have a way for our app to communicate with? “Do they have an API?”: : available for public use. “Open API” : not available for public use. “Closed API” : some APIs have a limit on how many requests you can make within a certain period e.g. (1000 requests per day). “API limit” “ ”: Create, Read, Update, and Delete. CRUD : is an awesome API development tool. “Test it with Postman” Postman : explains the type of data being sent. “Header” : the data being sent. “Body” Globally Unique Identifier that is used for distinctive records e.g. (e20f5d52–5490–4523–87c5-af46dadfe7c1). “GUID”: : a type of data format characterized by {"key":"value"} “JSON” : a type of data format characterized by <tag>value</tag> “XML” : a type of API that uses REpresentational State Transfer constraints. “REST(ful) API” : a type of API that uses Simple Object Access Protocol and is XML-based. “SOAP API” : a query language for APIs. “GraphQL” : most APIs have a reference page about getting started, authentication, and methods that it supports. “Check their documentation” Conclusion Tech people love using technical words. This is not done to confuse or exclude outsiders, but rather, to quickly and effectively communicate ideas, problems, and solutions. As with any languages, you can combine words to form meaningful sentences: “Yes! The API response returned a 200!” “Try creating a new user. Hit the user endpoint and make a POST request” Hopefully you are now able to understand the two sentences above. The vernacular of those in the tech field can seem daunting at first, but with time and practice, it will start to become second nature. If you have another way of communicating about APIs or you have any questions with examples above, just drop a comment below to let me know. Thanks for reading! Originally posted on . A Cloud Guru
