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The importance of a good API.

In case you don’t know, an API (Application Programming Interface) allows an accepted third party to interact with your web application. It’s a golden gate that allows data in and out of your application and allows it to take action based upon the data received.

What this means in reality is that the third party can do stuff with your web application that you’re happy for them to do. So, for example, we’ve built an API for Novus Leisure that allows third parties to query their online customer database and to add new users to it if they’re not already in it.  This simple task means Novus Leisure can grow their database quickly and easily and only pay the third party for guaranteed new unique users.

In practice, API’s can be built and extended to allow pretty much any activity that you wish (so long as it’s programmable).There are two types of API, closed and public. The Novus API (see above) is an example of a closed API whilst the Google Map’s API that we’ve used for Squaremeal and Latenightlondon venue mapping is an example of an open, public API.

As the web rapidly moves towards an integrated experience, so web applications are expected to seamlessly communicate with each other. This demand places enormous hidden reliance upon good API development because they’re the pipes that connect web applications.

Commercially, for many public web applications a good API is amongst the company’s greatest assets as it allows others to build and exploit their platform and a successful public API will help capture customers. For example, the Facebook API allows other developers to developer widgets and tools that link with the Facebook service, providing a richer customer experience, and ultimately driving more traffic and business to Facebook. Having said that a badly made API can be a company’s greatest liability and not only result in poor customer experiences but also an un-ending stream of support calls so it’s really is worth spending the time and effort in getting it right and maintaining the documentation needed for proper use.

Services that use API’s are often referred to as Web Services or Mash-ups. There is a subtle difference between these two terms.

A Web service is a site that is based upon an API, which allows a user to access the single service and undertake the features available whilst a mash-up is a web application that combines data from more than one source onto a single integrated tool.

A beautiful example of a mash-up is ‘Oakland Crimespotting’

(http://oakland.crimespotting.org/) This site takes live crime data from the Oakland district police authorities and places it onto a city map. Cleverly, you can filter the map data so that for example, only locations of murders and aggravated assaults are displayed. It’s interesting to visualise where the majority of crimes take place and to see the correlation between them. This mash-up was created independently of the authorities that control the data and shows how new and unexpected services can be produced as a result of providing API’s and public data.

Having attended a few events where there is much talk about the future of the semantic web and the delivery of deeper, personal online experiences it seems apparent that there will be an ever-greater reliance upon APIs as the conduits for travel and linkage between data and the customer experience. Doing one well therefore will improve the lot of programmers, end-users and the corporate entity.

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