adminIn this blog, we are taking an attempt to explain the basics of API & SDK to enable broader understanding of these concepts.
What is an API?
APIs are techniques that allow different software components to communicate with each other using a set of contracts and protocols. The capacity of your digital tools to work together seamlessly as your business expands is essential. Applications can exchange data fast thanks to APIs, which also helps you save time.
Consider yourself sitting in a restaurant, waiting to place your order. The kitchen is the supplier who will carry out your order while you, the customer, are seated at the table with a list of options.
For the kitchen to receive your order and for the food to be served to your table, a link is required. Since the chefs are preparing your food in the kitchen, it cannot be them. Something is required to connect the client placing the order and the chef preparing the food. That’s where the waiter, or API, comes into play.
Your order is taken by the waiter, who then passes it to the chef in the kitchen. The response i.e. food—is subsequently served back to you at your table.
How do APIs work?
APIs can also be considered as contracts with documentation that represents an agreement between two parties. This contract determines how the server will respond to a request made by the client.
The most widely used and adaptable APIs available today on the web are REST APIs. Requests are sent to the server as data by the client. The server performs internal processes using this client input and sends the results back to the client.
Use Cases of APIs
Developers and businesses can use APIs in a plethora of different ways. While demand and sector-specific requirements drive adoption and implementation, it’s also widely known that a number of businesses use APIs as a source of revenue.
APIs allow you to offer more features and capabilities without investing a lot of resources in integrations. The following are some ways that businesses use APIs to get the most out of them:
- Embedding third-party APIs
- Develop internal APIs
- Create APIs and make them accessible to external use
Benefits of APIs?
From imparting multiple industries with enhancements in speed, agility, consistency, and accuracy, organisations maintain to apprehend the capacity of extending and integrating application data flows through APIs, taking into account smoother enterprise system integration alongside different forms of B2B technology.
Utilising APIs can pay off for the business, from social collaboration tools to more creative methods of client outreach.
APIs enable communication between your product or service and other products and services without requiring you to understand how they are developed, which makes app development simpler, time as well as money can be saved as a result of that. APIs provide you flexibility, simplify design and administration and open up options for creativity when you’re developing new tools and products or managing ones that already exist.
What is an SDK?
SDK stands for software development kit. It is a collection of programs and software tools used by programmers to produce apps for particular platforms.
Libraries, documentation, code samples, procedures, and tutorials are just a few of the things that SDK tools will provide that developers may use and incorporate into their own applications. SDKs are devised to be used by specific platforms or programming languages.
The Characteristics of a Good SDK
Your SDK needs to benefit other companies and their developers because it will be used outside of your organisation. The following features of your SDK must exist for that value to be accurate:
- simple for other developers to use
- comprehensive documentation that explains how your code functions
- sufficient functionality to enhance the value of other apps
- does not adversely affect the CPU, battery, or data use of a mobile device
- is compatible with other SDKs
- Simply put, it must function. While it would be ideal if it worked elegantly, when time is of the importance, anything that gets the job done should suffice.
SDK use cases
SDKs are part and parcel of mobile app development. They have many use cases:
- Programming language-specific SDKs like the JSON and Java Developer Kit (JDK) are used to develop programs in those languages in a streamlined, standardised way.
- Analytics SDKs from Google and others provide data about user behaviours, paths and actions.
- Monetization SDKs like Google, Facebook and others make it easy for developers to roll advertising out in their existing apps, with the goals of generating revenue.
Benefits of mobile SDK
SDKS facilitates developers’ work by offering the following:
- access to the instructions and elements needed for software development: For instance, a retail SDK that pulls in everything you’d want for your app (e.g., cart, favourites, wishlist, checkout, etc.).
- quicker and more seamless integrations SDKs offer quick access to necessary information and streamline necessary standard operations.
- shorter product development lifecycle and more effective product deployment and market entry Because an SDK is designed to educate, equip, and offer development shortcuts, developers may concentrate on building the planned product.
- Built-in assistance and knowledge: You don’t need to look up solutions or pay additional staff because SDKs already have knowledge in the form of written code and documentation.
Difference between SDK and API:
API: the Postman
Think of an API as a postman that sends your app’s requests to other software and the responses back to your app. Simple example:
It’s an API that allows communication between Google Calendar and travel apps, so when a user books a trip, it’s synced to the calendar.
SDK: the Post Office/Hardware Store
SDK can be treated as a combination of post office and hardware stores.
Everything you need to communicate with other software (i.e. one or more APIs) and materials you can use to build entirely new apps (i.e. code libraries, debugging facilities, technical notes, tutorials, and documentation).
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