What are API (Application Programming Interface)

Question

Sometimes I hear API, Wikipedia API, Google API etc, please what is API and to use them, will one have to learn some other sort of programming code bits to use APIs alongside programming languages?

Answer 1

An API is an Interface for Programming an existing Application. For example, Minecraft Pi Edition had an API that would let other programs connect to it over a network socket and send it commands or ask for information such as player position and block values, so basically programming Minecraft to do stuff without changing the Minecraft application itself. The Windows API doesn’t involve network sockets directly, but is still your app telling Windows to do stuff, where Windows stands on its own as an application, but now you’re making new programming for it. Some APIs import as libraries with functions and classes, others you have to interact with purely over a network connection and deal with the JSON they want or will send you (an easy key:value data format). I believe the Minecraft PI API had kind of its own syntax on the network end, but the readymade libraries turned that into native functions for most languages. So, yes, you may need to learn some extralingual syntax to use an API.