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Screenshot of web API documentation written by NASA. A web API is an application programming interface (API) for either a web server or a web browser.As a web development concept, it can be related to a web application's client side (including any web frameworks being used).
REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to guide the design and development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of a distributed, Internet -scale hypermedia system, such as the Web, should behave.
An API may be custom-built for a particular pair of systems, or it may be a shared standard allowing interoperability among many systems. The term API is often used to refer to web APIs, [2] which allow communication between computers that are joined by the internet.
A Web API is a development in Web services where emphasis has been moving to simpler representational state transfer (REST) based communications. [2] Restful APIs do not require XML-based Web service protocols (SOAP and WSDL) to support their interfaces.
The Web Application Description Language (WADL) is a machine-readable XML description of HTTP-based web services. [1] WADL models the resources provided by a service and the relationships between them. [1] WADL is intended to simplify the reuse of web services that are based on the existing HTTP architecture of the Web.
The authentication mechanisms described above belong to the HTTP protocol and are managed by client and server HTTP software (if configured to require authentication before allowing client access to one or more web resources), and not by the web applications using a web application session.
It categorizes a Web API into four levels (from 0 to 3) with each higher level corresponding to a more complete adherence to REST design. The next level also contains all the characteristics of the previous one. [4] [5] Other classification systems for Web API services design also exist, such as CoHA and WS 3. [3]
"A core set of Web protocols like HTTP, HTTPS and plain XML, the only real difference between traditional SOA and the concept of WOA is that WOA advocates Representational state transfer (REST), an increasingly popular, powerful, and simple method of leveraging Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as a Web service in its own right".