REST APIs are frequently used in today’s technologies and software systems. While many enterprises produce REST APIs and provide data to external systems, many enterprises obtain their data needs from external systems through REST APIs. Since the use and popularity of APIs have increased recently, it is possible to find APIs in almost every category and perform API integrations. So what exactly does it mean to perform a single API integration?
Almost every software project implements API integrations. However, it should not be forgotten that performing API integration is a serious process from start to finish and creates serious costs in cases where wrong steps are taken. In this article, we will explain exactly what API integration is. Then we will touch on multiple topics such as API integration methods and use cases.
Table of Contents
What Is API Integration?
API integration is when one software application connects to use another application’s API to extend its perspective and functionality. That is, seamlessly adding a different API to the target application in a compatible way. API integrations power processes at virtually every layer and department of a business to keep data in sync, increase productivity, and more.
Find APIs for multiple categories that you can easily integrate into your apps.
What Should Be Considered in the API Integration Process?
API integrations provide many convenience and speed to businesses. However, an API integration that is not done correctly will do more harm than good to businesses. There are some points to consider when performing an API integration. Some of these points are as follows.
API documentation: The first thing to do in the API integration process is to read and understand the API documentation. For instance, by reading the API documentation, developers learn about API examples, error messages, response formats, and more. Otherwise, an integration without learning this information will not yield successful results.
Secure connection: The security factor always takes priority in the API integration process. It is important to establish a secure connection in the processes of receiving and providing data from external systems. Additionally, authentication, data encryption, and taking other security measures provide a correct API integration for businesses.
Performance control: API integration is the connection of the application with external systems. The performance of this connection directly affects the performance of the application as well. During the API integration process, it is essential to perform performance tests on the integrated API within the application and analyze its performance.
Top Use Cases of API Integrations
In this section, we will talk about the most used use cases of API integrations.
Web Scraping
Web scraping APIs are among the most popular APIs integrated into projects today. These APIs provide a seamless stream of data from target websites to the applications they are used in. In this way, applications can automatically obtain the data they need with these APIs.
For example, Zenserp API is a web scraping API that has been used in thousands of projects recently. This API provides uninterrupted and fast SERP data to the projects it integrates. It supports multiple search engines such as Google and Yandex. It also scrapes almost every category of Google. With this API, businesses obtain SERP data and perform both competitor and SEO analysis.
News
News sites are another popular use case for API integrations. Today, we see breaking news from many different sources and categories on news sites. Many news site platforms obtain this data from a different API and make it available to their users.
The mediastack API is a media API that supports more than 7,500 news sources. Many news site platforms actively use this API. It provides breaking news from more than 50 countries in multiple languages. It features popular news sources such as NY Times, CNN, BBC, and ESPN. By using this API, news site platforms provide their users with news from thousands of sources in more than one category from a single point and appeal to users globally.
Currency
The number of platforms that serve currencies-related investors or standard users has increased. These platforms instantly provide their users with the most up-to-date data on hundreds of currencies. These platforms usually get all this currency-related data from a currency API.
Fixer API is a currency API that more than 200,000 developers and businesses such as Microsoft, Samsung, and Kranken use in their projects. This API provides users with 170 official currency information instantly. The accuracy of the data provided by this API is quite high. For this, it provides currency data from official financial institutions. Additionally, this API provides historical data for 170 currencies. Platforms using this API provide their users with currency conversion services with the most up-to-date currency data.
Food
Today, especially after the pandemic, home cooking has become very popular. Many applications in this field have actively offered users. These applications provide users with thousands of menus, and food that they can create using the ingredients present in their refrigerators. Additionally, they actively provide instructions on how to make these menus with suggestions.
The spoonacular API is a frequently used Nutrition, Recipe, and Food API on these platforms. This API allows users to access over 365,000 recipes and 86,000 food products. Platforms can provide many services to their users with this API, such as nutritional information, meal planning, and getting recipe information.
Investment
Investment platforms have recently reached a level that will appeal to people of almost every age group on a global scale. Today, there are many investment platforms and stock market investment comes first. Many platforms provide instant data from New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Shanghai Stock Exchange, and many other popular stock markets to their users with a stock market API integration.
The marketstack API provides stock market data to over 30,000 customers such as Uber and Amazon. This API integrates easily into applications. It is also quite simple to use. It provides its users with information on more than 170,000 stocks worldwide, collected from 70 global exchanges. This API also provides historical data over 30 years old. Thus, platforms using this API provide their users with instant information on hundreds of thousands of stocks from more than one global stock market.
Conclusion
In ending this article, API integration is just as important as integrating an API correctly. Businesses can prefer manual integration or integration platforms according to their needs. However, it is useful to follow the best practices during an API integration.
Look at the free useful APIs, and quickly use them in your system.
FAQs
Q: What Is a RESTful API (Application Programming Interface)?
A: RESTful API is an architecture that works over the HTTP protocol that provides communication between client-server. It enables applications to communicate by carrying data in XML, JSON, and many more formats between client and server. RESTful APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are lightweight and run fast. In addition, they have a stateless structure.
Q: What Is Custom API Integration?
A: Custom API integration is a process that defines the connection between applications or systems. Custom API integrations allow developers to manage data flow between different systems.
Q: Are the APIs Listed in APILayer Easy to Integrate?
A: Yes, they are. All APIs listed under APILayer are APIs that can be easily integrated into projects. It increases the impact on the development of business processes. In addition, the API documentation provides sample integration codes for multiple programming languages for all the APIs listed.
Q: What are the Advantages of Using an API Integration Platform?
A: Basically, API integration refers to the seamless integration of data provided in external systems into the target system. There are multiple advantages of doing this with middleware integration tools, namely API integration platforms. Some of these advantages are:
- Fast integration
- Delivering efficiency
- Wide choice of uses
- No technical knowledge required
