Application programming interface

[jason s]

An application programming interface (API) is a set of functions, procedures, methods, classes or protocols that an operating system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer programs. Mainly there are two kinds of APIs –

• Language-dependent APIs are available only for a particular programming
language. In that case those APIs use the syntax and other elements of
the programming language to make the API convenient to use inthe
particular context.
• Language independent APIs are written in such a way that they can be
called from many programming languages. This is a favorable feature for a
service-style API which is not bound to a particular process or system and is
available as a remote procedure call.

[bod-jack]

By following the below steps you can easily configure and integrate API:-

1) First you will need to login to your control panel>> go to My Server and click API Configurations. Now select the domain under which you want to setup your API. You can also choose your customized name for the virtual directory. Click Save Settings. At the bottom, it will display you the access URL of your API.

2) Open your application and use this URL to connect your application to API.

[jason s]

examples of API are :

Below are listed some well-known APIs.

* Carbon and Cocoa for the Macintosh OS
* iPhone API
* OpenGL cross-platform 3D graphics API
* Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL)
* Google Maps API
* MediaWiki API
* YouTube API
* PayPal Payment Pro
* Facebook API
* TD Ameritrade API
* Drupal API
* The PC BIOS call interface
* Comedi Data Acquisition API
* Single UNIX Specification (SUS)
* Windows API
* The various Java Platform Edition APIs (Micro, Standard, Enterprise)
* ASPI for SCSI device interfacing
* DirectX for Microsoft Windows

[Ryan]

APIs for operating systems can be daunting, especially the calls to the user interface routines to display contents on the screen. There are more than a thousand API calls in a full-blown operating system such as Windows, Mac or Unix.

[BodShane]

That's true...

API are setup as required in a Operating System environment.