What is an API?

API stands for Application Programming Interface, which refers to a programming interface (intermediary) that allows two applications to communicate with each other.

In the case of Web APIs, these two applications refer to the frontend and backend of a web application. The frontend is the interface part of the website that users see, enabling interaction with the server through login windows, order buttons, text input fields, and more. The backend, on the other hand, handles the database that stores data and the business logic that processes requests received from the frontend.

Let’s take searching for hamburger restaurants on Google as an example. When you type “hamburger restaurants” in the search box and press enter, the browser requests the necessary information from Google’s server through an API. The server receives this API request, processes it, and then sends the search result data back to the user as a response. This is a typical example of API communication.

Simply put, an API is a tool that websites use to exchange data with servers.