Or why would it put in all the work of making an API just so its own workforce could use it? All good questions. Either way, you fall under the mantle of API consumers. These consumers benefit from using each type of API in several ways. Many companies consume their own APIs. Using APIs internally enables the workforce to streamline operations, foster collaboration, and strengthen transparency across the company. Companies want to provide the best experience for their users.
Rarely can one product satisfy and anticipate every need and expectation. That is why they use APIs to extend the functionality of their products. For example, OpenTable uses the Maps JavaScript API to embed an interactive map on its site, making it possible for users to get directions from their homes to nearby restaurants in just a few clicks. Without the Google Maps API, developers at OpenTable would have to dedicate their time and resources to drawing their own map and providing real-time map data to include this feature on its site.
So, instead of wasting their time trying to reinvent the wheel, APIs enable developers to focus on creating new tools and functionality that deliver more value to their users.
Simply put, becoming an API provider unlocks business opportunities and other benefits that build upon those of simply consuming APIs.
The easy answer is money. Google , Yelp , Facebook , and thousands of other companies make their APIs public and monetize them so that they become additional lines of revenue.
In fact, at some companies, APIs are the major source of revenue. According to a recent report by MuleSoft Inc. By sharing what you do really well with the broadest possible audience, a network of users beyond your employees and customers—including third-party developers and consumers—will become reliant on the data and functionality provided by your APIs.
Ultimately, this will improve the usage and adoption of your main platform. In other words, APIs not only expand your customer base, they generate new market opportunities in the digital economy. Above, we discussed how API consumers benefit from using third-party solutions that allow them to focus their time and resources on making their own products better rather than reinventing the wheel.
More often than not, however, the relationship between API consumers and providers is much more give-and-take. You may recall that in the early days of Twitter, its user interface was a little clunky. Then TweetDeck , an independent app at the time, came along and built a better user interface on top of the Twitter platform using its public API so that all users could have better Twitter experiences. Now what? You might also want to search by cost — you may want to start with a free API before exploring paid APIs, for example.
Once you have an API selected, get your reading glasses on. As mentioned, an API key is used to identify yourself as a valid client, set access permissions, and record your interactions with the API. Some APIs make their keys freely available, while others require clients to pay for one. Always key your key private, like you would a password.
If your key leaks, a bad actor could make API requests on your behalf. You may be able to void your old key and get a new one if such a breach occurs. In addition to providing all the information required to work with the API, like whether or not you need an API key, it usually includes examples and tutorials. Refer to the documentation for how to get your key, how to send requests, and which resources you can fetch from its server.
The easiest method is to use an HTTP client to help structure and send your requests. At this stage, online tutorials can come to the rescue. For example, this YouTube video explains how to use an API to pull location data from Google Maps and then use those coordinates to find nearby photos on Instagram. Now that you understand how to make requests to your API of choice, you can sync your application with it.
As a marketer, you don't need to worry about this stage of an API integration. These are also referred to as endpoints. Can you guess why?
Because they go at the end of the URL. Each endpoint is also assigned a list of actions the client can request of the server. So, a plural endpoint may be for listing or creating resources, and the singular endpoint may be for retrieving, updating, and canceling a specific resource. In other words, by allowing developers to easily structure the way they want to get data into and out of a server, they can spend less time accessing the data they need and more time creating better user experiences.
If you want standardization, go with SOAP. The main reason? To connect your application to the rest of the software world. Web scraping gives you more accurate data. Web scraping has no rate limits. Many APIs have their own rate limits, which dictate the number of queries you can submit to the site at any given time. Web scraping will give you better structured data. If you need to clean the data received from your API, it can be time-consuming.
You may also need to make multiple queries to get the data you actually want and need. Web scraping, on the other hand, can be customized to give you the cleanest, most accurate data possible. When it comes to reliability, accuracy, and structure, web scraping beats out the use of APIs most of the time, especially if you need more data than the API provides.
The Knowledge Graph is better for exploratory analysis. This is because the Knowledge Graph is constructed by crawls of many more sites than any one individual could be aware of.
The range of fact-rich queries that can be constructed to explore organizations, people, articles, and products provides a better high level view than the results of scraping any individual page.
Knowledge Graph entities can combine a wider range of fields than web extraction. This is because most facts attached to Knowledge Graph entities are sourced from multiple domains. The broader the range of crawled sites, the better the chance that new facts may surface about a given entity. Additionally, the ontology of our Knowledge Graph entities changes over time as new fact types surface. The Knowledge Graph standardizes facts across all languages.
Diffbot is one of the few entities in the world to crawl the entire web. Most fact types are also standardized into English which allows exploration of a wider firmographic and news index than any other provider. The Knowledge Graph is a more complete solution.
Should you want a list of all of the folks in Happyville with the last name Smith, you could do one of two things:. The second option requires more coding fluency, but is great for programmers who want to use the database of another program to enhance their own apps. Many companies use the open APIs from larger companies like Google and Facebook to access data that might not otherwise be available.
APIs, in this case, significantly lower the barriers to entry for smaller companies that would otherwise have to compile their own data. An API is how two computers talk to each other. The server has the data and sets the language, while the client uses that language to ask for information from the server FYI, servers do not send data without a client requesting data, but developers have found some ways around this with webhooks.
APIs can do anything! Well, not so fast. The language and syntax of APIs severely limits their abilities. There are four types of actions an API can take:. When you combine the endpoints with these actions, you can search or update any available information over an API. This is how you got to our site in the first place — by typing a URL in the search bar in your browser.
The uses and examples we list here are much more basic and pull much less data than what your standard API is good for. Example URL from documentation — request weather for a particular city:. An API is useful for pulling specific information from another program. If you know how to read the documentation and write the requests, you can get lots of great data back, but it may be overwhelming to parse all of this.
They can build programs that display data directly in an app or browser window in an easily consumable format. This article barely scrapes the iceberg that is API technology. I researched the web quite a bit to learn about APIs. These are the articles and videos that helped me the most:. There are plenty of companies out there that will connect existing APIs or build custom connections for you. These can range from simple data-triggered apps like Zapier to full-scale business intelligence integrations that pull huge amounts of data from multiple sources for analysis.
Knowing how an API works is the first step to building great integrations. Sign up for our newsletter, and make your inbox a treasure trove of industry news and resources. Weekly sales and marketing content for demand gen. The latest business technology news, plus in-depth resources. A bimonthly digest of the best human resources content. Looking for software? Try our Product Selection Tool.
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