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An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. [1] A document or standard that describes how to build such a connection or interface is called an API specification.
An example of a popular web API is the Astronomy Picture of the Day API operated by the American space agency NASA. It is a server-side API used to retrieve photographs of space or other images of interest to astronomers, and metadata about the images. According to the API documentation, [15] the API has one endpoint:
An open API (often referred to as a public API) is a publicly available application programming interface that provides developers with programmatic access to a (possibly proprietary) software application or web service. [1] Open APIs are APIs that are published on the internet and are free to access by consumers. [2]
The APIs provide functionality like analytics, machine learning as a service (the Prediction API) or access to user data (when permission to read the data is given). Another important example is an embedded Google map on a website, which can be achieved using the Static Maps API, [ 1 ] Places API [ 2 ] or Google Earth API.
Major changes in OpenAPI Specification 3.1.0 include JSON schema vocabularies alignment, new top-level elements for describing webhooks that are registered and managed out of band, support for identifying API licenses using the standard SPDX identifier, allowance of descriptions alongside the use of schema references and a change to make the ...
APIs provided by the Information Model Management Service. API management is the process of creating and publishing web application programming interfaces (APIs), enforcing their usage policies, controlling access, nurturing the subscriber community, collecting and analyzing usage statistics, and reporting on performance.
API description languages are sometimes called interface description languages (IDLs). The structured description might be used to generate documentation for human programmers ; such documentation may be easier to read than free-form documentation, since all documentation generated by the same tool follows the same formatting conventions.
API testing is a type of software testing that involves testing application programming interfaces (APIs) directly and as part of integration testing to determine if they meet expectations for functionality, reliability, performance, and security. [1] Since APIs lack a GUI, API testing is performed at the message layer. [2]