1 Oct - APIs (Luca)

Question 1

What is an API?

Answer 1

Application Programming Interfaces
to call functions on remote servers via http
(for free!)

Question 2

Explain the REST architectural style for APIs?

Answer 2

Client-server:
* A client-server architecture
Stateless:
* The server keeps no session information. Each request is served independently
Uniform interface:
* An API specifies how to access resources and the format of responses

Secondary:
Layered:
* The server that handles the request might act as intermediary and issue a request
to another server to get the resource
Cacheability:
* Intermediaries (or clients) can cache the results