13/05/2019 Unité Learn the Benefits of APIs | Salesforce Trailhead

Build Great APIs and Integrations with MuleSoft (/content/learn/trails/great-integrations-mulesoft)

API Basics (/content/learn/modules/pw-api-basics?trail_id=great-integrations-mulesoft)

Learn the Benefits of APIs

Learn the Benefits of APIs

(topic-title) Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Define abstraction.
Name the benefits of using an API.
Explain HTTP verbs and their usage.

While setting up her fitness equipment, the fitness club owner begins to imagine what
this process would be like without having standard specifications for electrical power.
The equipment wouldn’t be the only thing to worry about. Things like the wiring in the
walls, additional devices the wiring is shared with, how the electricity is generated (wind
farm, nuclear plant, coal-fired generator, or solar panels), even where the source of
power is located. Luckily, she doesn’t have to worry about the small details, just plug it in
and go.

APIs bring a similar level of predictability and reliability. 

(topic-title) Benefits of Using APIs

APIs help open up a plethora of opportunities. Here are ways that software, customers,
developers, and their teams can benefit from using APIs. 

(topic-title) Outsourcing
Any compatible device (in this case, the gym equipment) can easily outsource its
electrical requirements to a service, and those devices can expect to get the same
results. Similarly, APIs allow you to outsource key data and functionality through a
predictable standard interface. Focus on making great applications and services, not on
figuring out how you’re going to get common, yet nuanced information.

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Consider how Lyft relies on the standard interface to Google Maps to import mapping
and geolocation into their mobile app. They don’t have to worry about how to make
maps work. They are able to focus on the business processes that make ride sharing
successful and leave the details of mapping to the service provider, Google.

(topic-title) Increased Mobility

Consuming-devices are easily moved from one socket to another. For example, with no
plug, matching socket or specifications, the gym owner may have to hardwire
equipment into the walls of the building. This would involve gathering the required
tools, exposing all the wires and joining them together. Of course, she would also need
to know something about the wires coming out of the wall. 

Thanks to a standard interface, moving equipment is simple. (Think about upgrading

software, migrating to a new service, or expanding your data center footprint.) Even if
the pattern of the interface changes—as it does when traveling from North America to
the United Kingdom—consuming devices can be easily adapted as the standards are
well-defined and documented.

(topic-title) Abstraction
When taking a look at the fitness club, the electrical socket is a layer of abstraction to
the underlying service, or electricity. What is abstraction you ask? It is a way of hiding the
working details of another system. 

As long as the service delivers 120 volts of AC power to the wall socket in the standard
way, the service provider is free to change anything and everything from just behind the
socket all the way to the source of power. Any changes are transparent to consuming
devices. 

APIs serve as a layer of abstraction between the data or function being provided and the
logic required to complete and run a task at the source. In other words, your software
just needs to know how to connect to the other system, not how the other system
works.
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Note

The interface where systems communicate represents a set of agreed-

upon standards (similar to the 120v AC standard for electricity) that
enables applications to make requests of the service and get data to be
displayed or processed. All APIs have their own sets of agreed-upon
standards known as the API's contract.

(topic-title) Increased Developer Productivity

When programmers write code, they rarely start from scratch. APIs are designed to take
an existing code base and use it whenever, wherever instead of attempting to re-create
those features. While reusing existing code limits differentiation between developers, a
reference to the API (more commonly referred to as calling an API) can supply it with
the expected data. Given how APIs can handle common tasks, and can even handle not-
so-common tasks, APIs can minimize application development time from months, or
even years, to weeks.

(topic-title) Using HTTP Protocols to Access Data

While there are no rules or laws deciding exactly how developers must connect their
applications to an API, several standards have emerged. For example, when applications
connect to APIs from across the Internet, the majority of API providers make the
connections over HTTP, or hypertext transfer protocol, otherwise known as the World
Wide Web. 

Whether it’s an application on your phone calling an API, or you’re retrieving your
current calorie count through a web browser, or you are saving your workout information
through the fitness equipment software, you’re relying on a special set of HTTP
commands called verbs.

HTTP Verbs Descriptions

POST Submit requested data to a server for processing

GET Retrieve requested data from a server

PUT Update and replace existing data with new data being sent in the request

DELETE Remove the requested data from the server

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In most cases, the service provider provisions a special web address known as an API
endpoint for the software to connect to using an HTTP verb. Here’s an example of an
endpoint from FitBit.

GET https://api.fitbit.com/1/user/[user-id]/activities/date/[date].json

Notice that instead of the www you’re familiar with, FitBit uses api. Here, a developer can
use the GET command to return the data needed to display. The expected response will
include the last activity (running), as well as any fitness challenges that the user did
previously. 

If a connected treadmill were to use this API, it can show a wealth of information useful
to the runner! Take this example of the response received after making a GET request to
the Fitbit API.

(topic-title) API

(topic-title) Treadmill Interface

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Get this: Applications aren’t limited to using one API at a time! An application can make
calls to multiple APIs and API providers. These composite applications are sometimes
called mashups. Thanks to the thousands of APIs that software developers can reach
over the Internet (more than 20,000 by last count according to
ProgrammableWeb.com), the Web has turned into a programmable platform that’s
equally, if not more, powerful than programmable platforms including Windows, Mac,
and Linux. 

(topic-title) Resources
Lightning Platform API Basics
(https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/api_basics)

Five Elements to an Amazing API (https://www.programmableweb.com/news/api-

godai-5-elements-amazing-api/analysis/2016/11/10)

To retrieve, submit, update, or delete data in a data store you must use
1 HTTP verbs. What are the names of those verbs, respectively?

A GIVE, GET, SMILE, REPEAT

B GET, POST, PUT, DELETE

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C POST, GET, DELETE, PLACE

D BUY, SELL, HOLD, INVEST

2 What is abstraction?

A A post-modern style popular among European artists.

B A form of artificial intelligence that develops complex human thoughts.

A way for applications to retrieve data without having to directly engage

C with the source system's logic.

D A way for APIs to talk to one another.

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