eli5 – What does an API & HTTP call mean? And what is the difference between both and their significance ?
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HTTP is just a particular method of communication. Kind of like saying “I’ll use morse code”. It just means “using this way of talking, I’m going to say something”. HTTP is a common way of a computer being able to communicate with a server. That’s all.
An API is just a pre-defined set of things you can say, usually to get some type of reply. So if you were playing chess your API might be [name of piece] [grid name to move to]. Like “Queen to A2”.
Making an API call over HTTP means “I will use HTTP to say something, and what I am going to say is something from our pre-defined list of options”
In our example you would use the communication method of HTTP to make an API call for Chess. You might get back a picture of the board game after the move was made.
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