Twitter recently announced they will no longer support free access to the Twitter API. Everyone seems up in arms about it and I can’t figure out what an API even is. What would doing something like this actually affect?
I’ve tried looking up what an API is, but I can’t really wrap my head around it.
Edit: I’ve had so many responses to read through and there’s been a ton of helpful explanations! Much appreciated everyone 🙂 thanks for keeping this doofus in the know
In: 419
In basic terms, an API (Application Programming Interface) is a way for two different applications to talk to each other, through some standard means. In most modern cases an API is accessed via HTTP(S) request (it’s the same kind of message you send via the internet to access a web page, for example. You navigate to ‘[https://www.reddit.com](https://www.reddit.com)’ and the reddit’s server delivers back a web page to your internet browser)
For instance (*and I don’t know the ins and outs of the twitter’s api so I’m just making a hypothetical example*), Twitter ‘s API could have a ‘GetLatestTweets’ function, which when accessed, returns information about the user’s most recent tweets, or something like that.
Some services will offer their API as a service- for example, a lot of the ‘lookup postcode’ things you see on websites will talk to an API by a software company that deals exclusively with address lookups, that requires payment to use.
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