I am working to build out the API Gallery for Streamdata.io, profiling a wide variety of APIs for inclusion in the directory, adding to the wealth of APIs that could be streamed using the service. As I work to build the index, I’m faced with the timeless question, what is an API? Not technically what an API does, but what is an API in the context of helping people discover the API they are looking for. Is Twitter an API, or is the Twitter search/tweets path of an API? My answer to this question always distills down to a specific API path, or as some call it an API endpoint. Targeting a specific implementation, use case, or value generated by a single API provider.
Like most things in the API sector, words are used interchangeably and depending on how much experience you have in the business, you will have much finer grained definitions about what something is, or isn’t. When I’m talking to the average business user, the Twitter API is the largest possible scope–the entire thing. In the context of API discovery, and helping someone find an API to stream or to solve a specific problem in their world, I’m going to resort to a very precise definition–in this case, it is the specific Twitter API path that will be needed. Depending on my audience, I will zoom out, or zoom in on what constitutes a unit of API. The only consistency I’m looking to deliver is regarding helping people understand, and find what they looking for–I’m not worried about always using the same scope in my definition of what an API is. https://goo.gl/2ivsBn #DataIntegration #ML
