An Introduction to APIs

An API is an inter­face, intended to be used by machines. It’s an easy way to offload more advanced inter­ac­tions with your data to exist­ing ser­vices, with­out rein­vent­ing the wheel. After all, if it’s an idea worth anybody’s time & money, it’s prob­a­bly been done before.

Almost every large web endeav­our now offers their func­tion­al­ity to com­put­ers and peo­ple alike. Google is the strongest con­tender, with Maps, Search and YouTube, as well as a host of smaller ser­vices.

Enough para­graphs, here’s a list:

• Pixlr.com

  Demo & Doc­u­men­ta­tion

  Pixlr is Pho­to­shop for your browser. It has the tool­bar, the fil­ters and even the dialogs of the pop­u­lar image edi­tor and can be inte­grated into your project via their API.

  So get this: Users can upload pic­tures to your web­site, select Edit (which is a link, just like Demo above) and see their image loaded into the famil­iar UI of Pixlr. After they are done draw­ing penises pho­to­shop­ping, the Save dia­log directs them and their new image right back to your website.

• TinyURL.com

  Demo & (unof­fi­cial) Documentation

  This is much sim­pler than Pixlr, but equally use­ful. You call a script on tinyurl.com (see Demo link) and get a short­ened link in return. Very use­ful for Twit­ter inter­ac­tions; or refer­ral links, if you are a smug bastard.

• Google.com

  Play­ground & Doc­u­men­ta­tion

  I’ve men­tioned Google and it may not seem like an insider’s tip, but not many peo­ple some to know that apart from map­ping and search­ing, you can also cre­ate charts, trans­late texts & load JavaScript libraries through their AJAX interface.

  If you’re not com­fort­able with their mono­lithic approach to web ser­vices, you can try Pro­gram­ma­bleWeb and search for the desired func­tion­al­ity there.

This entry was last updated on Sunday, February 8th, 2009 at 6:09 pm.
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