Web APIs Tutorial

What is Web API?

Web API is the API provided by the web browser and can be used directly to fetch any kind of data of that device or any other details according to the used API. The web includes a variety of APIs that can be used to add more functions to the web. Basically web API provides many more APIs, methods, and interfaces that can be used in JavaScript to get more features in an application.

Why Web API?

There are so many reasons to use Web APIs in the first place, these are discussed below:

• Reduces efforts: As web development or development of software is increasing day by day. everyone wants a fast web application so that we can use Web APIs, as it reduces development time and effort. The third-party APIs help to load or fetch the data fast which helps developers to put less effort.
• Less maintenance: As APIs are third-party interfaces and maintained by third party also, there is no need to look after an API and we can just fetch our data by using those APIs and use it on our current web page.
• Security: APIs are used to exchange data between two separate parties so it must be secure so that other than authorized parties no one else can access that. APIs provided by third parties are already secured by organizations with many layers.

Types of Web APIs

There are many variations of web API. Each web API is different and specific in nature, and it provides features according to their properties and methods. In web applications, we can get our work done by these web APIs.

Name of web API	Description
Web Storage API	Facilitates the feature of storing data within the browser on the client side.
Web API CSS Font Loading	Handles the dynamic change in CSS that occurs on the web page.
Web API History	Used to access the browser history. It basically gives us access to the history of global objects.
Web API Popover	Used to display some messages that require instant attention e.g. Popovers in the form of Help, Modals, Toasts, etc.
Web API Picture-in-Picture	Enables websites to display a video in a floating window that stays on top of windows
Web API Fullscreen	Used to control the fullscreen mode.
Web API Battery	Used to track the information of the battery status of the given device.
Web API Clipboard	Used to directly access the user’s clipboard.
Web API Vibration	Enables web developers to manage device vibrations and enrich user interactions.
Web API UI Events	Used to handle the event that occurs in the UI layer. This UI event can be a mouse event or keyboard event
Web API Console	Provides an interactive environment within web browsers, allowing developers to interact with JavaScript and web APIs, debug code, and inspect various aspects of web applications.
Web API HTML Drag and Drop	Used to make user interaction by enabling them to drag some boxes made with any tag and drop them like text and images into the dropping regions that are created on DOM
Web API Fetch	This is used to perform requests. This method returns a Promise which can be further used to retrieve response of the request.

What is Browser APIs?

API stands for Application Programming Interface that is used to make connection between the server and the client. Browser APIs are the APIs that are built in the web browser and can be used by any web page. There are many APIs that can be considered as web browser APIs for e.g. Fetch API that is used to fetch the data by making HTTP request, Device APIs that is used for fetching the information of deviced or locations, Storage APIs for getting the information about the storage of given web browser, Drawing graphics API that is used for making canvas config easily, and Audio & video APIs for management or usage od audio and video on the web browser.

What is Third-party APIs?

As we have already seen all the web APIs that are accessible directly through the web browser. But there are many other APIs that are provided by other platforms or third party for e.g. google, facebook. These website provides the API and we can access them in our browser by using JavaScript. The APIs provided by other platform are called as third-party APIs. The famous example is google map API which is used by many developers so that they can track their location or other valuable features.

FAQs

1. How do I authenticate and secure the Web API?

For securing the web APIs you can use API keys or OAuth. these methods will provide you secret key and token for authentication so that only valid use can acess the information provided by the API.

2. How do I handle errors in Web APIs?

We can handle errors by setting the status for every request made by the client. Also, we can use try catch for dealing with errors.

3. What is API versioning?

Whenever there is change in API for e.g. addition of any kind of features or fixing any bug, by doing this we set a new version of API with new endpoints and more compatible API that is called as API versioning.

4. How does a Web API work?

Web API enables the communication between the client and server. Fisrt of all client will send request for fetching the data or information then it will make a HTTPS request to that endpoint of that API. server accepts the request and process all the logic and produce a response for that request and send back to the client if there is nay kind of error comes in it throw the error to the client. that’s how an API works.

5. Is web API secure?

Yes, Web APIs are secure, you can use it anywhere according to your need. Also, you can make it secure by using many authorization process.