Have you ever noticed that we receive different services from an application that meets a certain need today? For example, weather information on news sites or exchange rate information for more than one currency on international e-commerce sites. Businesses provide these services to their users through API integrations. An API integration is an important addition that quickly improves users’ application experience.
Many businesses perform API integrations with their applications and obtain data for different services with just one HTTP request. This process is actually a data integration. In this article, we will talk about the advantages of API integrations in business processes. Then, after explaining how to make a good API integration, we will perform some popular API integrations used in businesses.
Table of Contents
What Are the Benefits of the API Integrations to Business Processes?
Making API integrations in software applications provides many benefits to businesses. In this section, we will list some benefits of API integration.
Efficiency: API integrations facilitate data sharing and communication. Businesses can easily obtain the data they need from different sources and provide them to their users.
Flexibility: API integrations allow businesses to be more flexible in the services they provide. Businesses can find multiple APIs belonging to multiple categories and be more flexible in developing their products.
Cost savings: API integrations provide businesses with cost savings. They do not waste time on issues such as obtaining, looking for, and securing the data they need.
Competitive advantage: API integrations directly help businesses gain a competitive advantage. Businesses can take action more quickly and effectively with API integrations. As a result, they can take more innovative steps than their competitors, providing the same service.
How Should a Good API Integration Be Done to Increase User Experience?
Good API integration can significantly affect and enhance users’ experience using your application. The following steps can enable you to do a good API integration to improve the user experience:
Understand user needs: This is the first thing to do before performing an API integration. Knowing the needs and demands of users enables businesses to make the right choice of API.
Choosing an API integration method: API integration refers to a seamless data transfer and directly enhancing the user experience. However, it is very important to choose the API integration type. Businesses should use an API integration platform or perform manual API integration according to their needs.
Integration testing: After performing the API integration, it is very important to perform detailed integration tests. In this way, while businesses offer different services to their users, they also prevent any potential error or performance problem from occurring.
Ensure security: Another important part of API integration is security. The connection established with the API integrated into the application with API integration must be secure. For this, businesses should take security measures such as HTTPS protocol, strong encryption methods, and regular security audits.
Some API Integration Use Cases to Directly Improve User Experience
In this section, we will perform some popular API integrations that are used in many applications today and are easily integrated into applications. These APIs are services that directly increase the user experience and provide high accuracy and security data.
Weather API
There are many applications that provide weather data. One of the most popular APIs from which these applications obtain weather data is the weatherstack API. The weatherstack API integrates quickly into applications and provides both current and historical weather data for millions of locations.
The integration of this API with the Python programming language is as follows:
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# coding: utf-8 import requests params = { 'access_key': 'YOUR_ACCESS_KEY', 'query': 'New York' } api_result = requests.get('https://api.weatherstack.com/current', params) api_response = api_result.json() print(u'Current temperature in %s is %d℃' % (api_response['location']['name'], api_response['current']['temperature'])) |
Foreign Exchange API
Forex data is also frequently encountered in e-commerce and finance applications. Fixer API is a free REST API that provides foreign exchange data. This API provides multiple data such as live, history, time series, and fluctuation for 170 currencies. In addition, it also provides a conversion service between currency values. It provides a JSON response with detailed information.
The integration of this API with the Python programming language is as follows:
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import requests url = "https://data.fixer.io/api/latest?access_key=API_KEY" payload={} headers = {} response = requests.request("GET", url, headers=headers, data=payload) print(response.text) |
Geolocation API
Geolocation APIs are one of the most frequently used APIs today. Nearly every business that provides localization services uses it to increase user experience and satisfaction. The geolocation API used by large businesses such as Microsoft and Samsung is the ipstack API. The ipstack API provides detailed location information corresponding to the IP address. It supports both JSON and XML formats. The response it offers includes detailed data such as location currency, time zone, and continent information.
The integration of this API with the Python programming language is as follows:
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import requests url = "https://api.ipstack.com/134.201.250.155?access_key=YOUR_ACCESS_KEY" payload={} headers = {} response = requests.request("GET", url, headers=headers, data=payload) print(response.text) |
Number Verification API
Number verification is done by every business where security is kept at a high level. There are many APIs on the market that provide this process. The most popular of these APIs is the numverify API. This API is a web service that helps validate phone number information for 232 countries. This API is an easy-to-use API and provides responses in JSON format.
The integration of this API with the Python programming language is as follows:
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import requests url = "http://apilayer.net/api/validate?access_key=YOUR_ACCESS_KEY&number=14158586273" payload={} headers = {} response = requests.request("GET", url, headers=headers, data=payload) print(response.text) |
Conclusion
Consequently, API integration is an effective method that helps developers and businesses improve user experience. Integrating a reliable API into an application with an API integration platform or manual integration method according to project needs means offering different services to users from a single application. In this way, users start to use these applications more and the traffic of the application begins to increase rapidly.
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FAQs
Q: How Does API (Application Programming Interface) Integration Improve User Experience?
A: API integration is a step that directly enhances the user experience. With API integration, developers can integrate APIs that provide different services into their applications with API integration tools or custom API integrations. As a result, users can access multiple services with a single application. This is a factor that rapidly increases user satisfaction.
Q: Does Each API Listed Under APILayer Have Sample Integration Codes?
A: Yes, it does. There are many REST APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) belonging to dozens of categories under APILayer. Each API has its own API documentation. These documentations contain sample integration codes for Java, Python, PHP, JavaScript, and many more programming languages to assist developers in the API integration process.
Q: What Should Be Considered When Choosing an API Integration Platform?
A: There are many API integration platforms available today to facilitate API integrations. It is very important to choose a good integration platform among these platforms. Firstly, the number of products an integration platform supports for API integration is very important. Then this platform needs to be reliable. Additionally, this platform should be easy to use, and able to be used by non-technical people.
Q: What Costs Do an API Integration Platforms Eliminate?
A: API integration platforms eliminate multiple costs in multiple or a single API integration to be integrated into any project. Firstly, it eliminates the development cost. Then it removes maintenance and management costs. Finally, it directly eliminates a very costly item such as infrastructure.
