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APIAutomation

The Ultimate Cheat Sheet on Automation Through APIs

Nowadays, it has become essential for businesses to automate their processes to boost productivity. It’s impossible to survive the intense competition without enhancing efficiency. As a developer, you can help businesses to automate their processes and boost productivity by implementing API-driven automation. You can replace human tasks with calls to an API. As a result, you can get the job done quickly and efficiently. In this post, you will find the ultimate cheat sheet on automation through APIs.  Now, let’s dive in.

What is an API?

API stands for Application Programming Interface. It helps you to simplify software development by enabling the applications to exchange data and functionality conveniently.  You can use it to perform various functions easily, like handling business logic and defining requests that have been made. One example of an API is an API for ip address location like ipstack.

Why do you need API?

Improve Collaboration and Workflows

Enterprises use hundreds of applications and platforms. Many of them are disconnected. APIs enable you to integrate them effortlessly. So, they can communicate with each other effectively. It allows enterprises to automate workflows and improve workplace collaboration.

Enhanced Security

APIs provide extra security by design. It works as a middleman to facilitate the abstraction of functionalities between different applications and platforms. API calls include authorization credentials, which minimize the risks of attacks on the server. During the exchange, HTTP header and cookies provide the data with an additional layer of security.

Wide Compatibility

APIs are built around the HTTP protocol. As a result, almost all the programming languages are compatible with them. You can use Python, PHP, JavaScript, and every other general-purpose language to access the APIs.    

Types of API     

There are three main types of API:

  1. Public APIs: Public APIs are available to the developers by public. The restriction is minimal. The developers may require to register to get the API key or OAuth. 
  2. Private APIs: Private APIs are specifically built for an organization. The developers use them to automate the business process.
  3. External APIs: External APIs are available to third-party developers. They are built for the end-users or the customers.

Which is the best API suite for automation?

The best API suite for automation is Apilayer. It has a large collection of productivity-boosting web APIs. By using them, you can add new features to your application quickly and easily.

How Apilayer facilitate automation?

Apilayer utilizes automated API-based conversion tools to help you translate the data with ease. You can integrate them into your application without any hassle.

Let’s think about a scenario where you are working on a product that requires collecting data from different websites. You don’t want to go through all the information manually. It will take a long time. You need a tool to automate the process for getting the job done quickly.

To automate the process of collecting website data, you can use Scrapestack, which comes with Apilayer. It is a powerful web scraping API that enables you to gather all the information effortlessly. You just need to follow these steps using Python:

1. Import requests library.

2. Create a variable, called params. Add access_key and url.

3. Then you have to add these lines:

4. Now, you can print the website_content.

Source Code:

You can find the source code here.

The code print an unrendered HTML page from Apple.com.

As you can see, Scrapestack has helped you to scrape all the information from Apple’s website easily. You don’t have to write lots of code. With just a few lines, you have managed to get the job done quickly.

Also, by scraping the data, businesses can get important information about competitors. But more importantly, they don’t have to engage any person to gather the data manually. Everything is done automatically with the power of API-driven automation.

Let’s take a look at another example with Mailboxlayer, which is a simple REST API for email address validation. It enables you to eliminate fake IDs from the database of your clients. So, you can help businesses find real customers. You just need to follow these steps to implement the email address validation functionality in JavaScript:

1. At first, you need to set the endpoint and your API access key.

2. Now, you can verify email address via AJAX call.

3. Now, you can access and use your preferred validation result objects.

Source Code:

You can find the source code right here.

The code will provide you with the validity scores for the email address that you have provided. By analyzing the score, you can identify the real email IDs.

As you can see, Mailboxlayer has made it very easy to implement the email address validation feature into any web application. The code is much shorter. Also, it helps you to automate the whole process of identifying the real email addresses. So, it can save a lot of your time.

Should I use Apilayer for automation?

Apilayer features a collection of APIs for helping you to automate different functions, like scraping website data and verifying the email address of your customers, quickly. It can make your life a lot easier. So, you should definitely consider using it.

Apilayer provides a variety of APIs for automating the processes. Get it now to boost your productivity.

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