Overview
API (Application Programming Interface) services are interfaces that provide a program with a description of how to interact with a system in order to retrieve and/or change the data within it. For the purpose of this article, an API Service is the means with which a piece of software (say, a mobile app) interacts with the functionality stored in the software’s backend (i.e. on the server or made available by a third party). Although there are some technical differences, for this article, we will assume that the APIs we discuss are “web APIs”; that is, APIs provided over the HTTP/HTTPS protocol.