Understanding Application programming interface (API).

Here is that explanation you may have been seeking for!

API which stands for Application programming interface in my opinion is a middle man let's take the restaurant for instance.

Let's say Dad took you out to a nearby restaurant to buy you some food and on the restaurant, a waiter (API) approaches and asked for your order, and you placed an order. Then the waiter took the order to the cook (server) and the cook (server) prepared the meal and the waiter (API) inturn serve the food to you guys (users).

This just displayed the role of an API between the server and users as I said earlier, the API serve as a middle man whom takes information from the server and present to the end users for consumption.

Why API?

I know the question in your mind right now are what is the importance of an API? Can't the server just serve the users directly? Then let's just use the restaurant as an example again imagine you are the cook and have 10 customers waiting to be served. You know it will be quite difficult to cook and at the same time be the only one having to take the food to the customers, for these reason the API has come in to reduce the load giving to the server to help it serve all the customers judiciously.

Hope this helps you understand the meaning of API and it's important?