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App developers benefit from APIs by having access to resources they wouldn't normally have. APIs offer numerous benefits for both app developers and providers - they create new revenue streams when valuable services or data become available at an affordable cost; additionally, they're great for consumers who value apps with numerous interactive additional features; plus, APIs provide businesses an edge against rival products on the market.
Our comprehensive guide below covers everything there is to know about them.
What Is An API?
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are sets of instructions, standards, and requirements that enable an app to make use of services offered by another device, platform, app, or software to deliver improved service to its user base.
Technically speaking, an API consists of codes that enable data transmission between software programs. Furthermore, this data exchange is subject to terms.
The application programming interface consists of two components:
- The specification describes the data exchange between two solutions that have specifications done as protocols for data delivery.
- Specification of the application interface is written.
Applications needing access to functionality provided by software will call its API; this defines how data and functionality will be delivered back.
Another application returns these functions when called. API also serves as the communication bridge between them both.
Function calls are statements in any programming language that instruct the software to perform specific actions and provide services.
Function calls often consist of verbs and nouns that make up part of its message, with API documentation also including such calls.
APIs serve many different functions and should be leveraged whenever possible to help streamline application development processes and speed up production times.
Developers also rely on them for adding functionality to solutions provided by other vendors or even building entirely new applications using third-party service providers.
Terminology Of API
APIs play a pivotal role in mobile application development. iOS and Android, for instance, enable native apps to utilize built-in features of devices directly via API.
Before discussing how API development impacts mobile app creation further, however, you must first gain an understanding of some essential terms related to its creation.
API Key
A key is a code that approves an API Request via a header or parameter.
Endpoint
When two systems interact using APIs, the endpoint of one channel is branded.
JSON
JSON is an acronym for JavaScript Object Notion. It is used as a data format for API requests and response parameters.
Get
The HTTP method is used to protect resources in the RESTful API.
Post
The HTTP method is what allows resource creation.
Oauth
Oauth stands for Open Standard Authorization Framework. It allows users to access the system without having to share any credentials.
Rest
REST architecture is used to facilitate communication among various applications and improve collaboration among them.
It works by making certain information only available via references rather than providing complete copies; an example would be the World Wide Web which implements RESTful system architectures.
Soap
SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. The messaging protocol uses application-layer protocols like SMTP, HTTP, and XML for formatting and transmission of messages.
Latency
The latency is the amount of time it takes an API to process a request and produce a response.
Rate-Limiting
API rate-limiting can be defined as the process of determining the rate that a user uses APIs. It limits the amount of API requests per period.
API Throttling
The term throttling refers to regulating API usage by each user during a specific time. When a user exceeds a daily limit for API requests, the server sends an HTTP status message stating "too many requests."
How Does API Work?
Consider an example to help understand an API: Imagine you visited the ABC website/app to book a flight, filling in all pertinent details such as date/flight number/city and return date into its form.
Once submitted, your list will display all flights with information such as flight times, availability of seats, and price. APIs are responsible.
The platform sends a request to the website to access information provided via API, and the website responds with all related data sent from API.
APIs are used to facilitate data sharing across platforms and websites such as flight booking platforms or airline websites; SOAP or REST protocols enable an API to interact directly with its endpoints.
Types Of API
There are four main types of APIs:
Open APIs
Open APIs, also known as Public APIs, are accessible to anyone without restriction.
Partner APIs
Since Partner APIs are restricted to developers, they require special rights or licenses.
Intern APIs
They are sometimes called Private APIs. Since they can only be accessed by internal systems, these APIs are less well-known to outsiders.
An organization uses internal APIs to improve its products and services.
Composite APIs
The composite API, which combines service APIs with data, is a set of tasks that are executed simultaneously but not by any particular task.
This helps accelerate the process of execution and enhance the performance of listeners on web interfaces. Web APIs are the most important APIs. Web service APIs include XML RPC, SOAP JSON RPC, REST, JSON RPC, SOAP, and SOAP.
Why Are APIs Essential For Businesses?
With APIs, apps would have more functionality, and development times would increase dramatically. Independent features must be created that do not adhere to any one programming language, cutting into marketing time available to businesses.
Understanding API development can also be instrumental in connecting two disparate applications to produce an enhanced user experience for both.
A hotel booking app, for instance, could use external APIs to store photographs of rooms available for reservation before showing them to potential guests before booking their room reservation.
Photo services may use APIs to give their users access to searching and booking hotels through travel apps, improving the functionality of these travel applications.
Here are a few advantages APIs bring to development companies.
Experience The Best In Quality
APIs enhance app functionality and improve the user experience. Data collection, integration, and personalization are all APIs that businesses can use.
Innovative Technologies
APIs are now essential to app developers, thanks to the advent of new application architecture, such as IoT, cloud computing, and AI.
Costs And Timelines Reduced
One of the greatest advantages for companies is reducing development time, speeding up marketing processes, and providing developers with access to APIs allowing them to include external features without writing code themselves.
Entrepreneurs will save both money and time, while developers can create apps with unique features.
API Developer Tools
There are many tools available for the creation of APIs. Some of the most popular tools and products that developers use for API development are:
Dredd
It is an HTTP API Testing Framework used for the validation of an API description on the backend.
The framework also goes over the API description in detail and determines whether or not the API is valid.
APIMatic
This is an API platform for developers. Developers use it to generate SDKs. It's also used to keep it up-to-date with API changes.
APIMatic also allows developers to convert API descriptions in more than one format.
Sandbox
Sandbox creates a quick and easy mock RESTful interface from the API definitions. This tool also helps to reduce the costs and risks associated with calling 3rd party APIs during testing.
Postman
App developers can use this tool to test and document the API performance. This is also an interactive tool that can be set up to automate.
Soap
SoapUI can be considered an open-source API testing tool. The tool is cross-platform compatible. It will be able to automate both functional and non-functional testing.
This tool is used to test Web APIs for security, compliance, and regression.
Swagger
Swagger is an open-source framework for API development. PayPal, Apigee. Microsoft and many other technology giants.
JMeter
It is an open-source application. This tool is used for RESTful API performance testing.
The Best Practices For API Development
We have listed below the top practices that you should consider when investing in API Development.
Throttling Is A Common Way To Reduce The Speed Of A Vehicle
You should practice app throttling if you want to protect APIs against DoS attacks or redirect traffic.
Api Gateway As An Enforcer
Consider an API gateway as a point of enforcement that ensures only authorized users gain access to sensitive information or messages and uses encrypted solutions so you can evaluate API usage over time.
Use The HTTP Superseding Method
Some proxy servers will only support POST or GET, which allows your RESTful API to override HTTP.
Assessment Of APIs And Infrastructure
Some tools for API development allow easy API analysis and assessment. You can analyze APIs in real time rather than have developers working 24 hours per day.
Documentation
Documentation should be extensive when creating an API. This will allow other developers to understand the API and improve their app's experience.
Read More: The best 15 Open-Source API Management Tools to consider
Best Practices For Securing APIs
Prioritize Security
Inventory your APIs and manage them. To secure and manage APIs that are publicly accessible, an organization must be aware of the existence of these APIs.
Many aren't. Work with the DevOps development team to inventory and discover your APIs.
Inventory And Manage Your APIs
Ensure you use a robust authentication and authorization system. Many publicly accessible APIs have major problems with authentication or authorization.
When APIs don't enforce authentication, as is the case for private APIs that are only meant to be used internally, or when an easy-to-break authentication factor is available, broken authentication can occur. An organization must control API access, as they are the entryway to their databases. Use OAuth2.0 or OpenID Connect-based solutions, which are reliable and well-proven authentication and authorization technologies, whenever possible.
Apply The Principle Of Minimum Privilege
The foundational principle of security states that all subjects (users and processes) should only be given the minimum access necessary to perform a specified function.
This principle should also be applied to APIs.
Encrypt All Traffic With TLS
Some businesses decide not to encrypt API data payloads that are seen as non-sensitive, like data from the weather service.
However, for those organizations that exchange sensitive data regularly (such as credit card information, bank information, and health information), TLS should be considered essential.
Information That Is Intended To Be Private Should Be Remove
Since APIs are a tool for developers, they contain passwords and keys that need to be removed before making them public.
This step can be overlooked. To prevent accidental disclosure of sensitive information, organizations should integrate scanning tools into DevSecOps.
Avoid Exposing More Information Than Is Necessary
APIs can reveal too much data, either in the form of the amount of unneeded information returned by the API or the information it reveals about the API's endpoint.
It usually happens when the API passes the filtering of data onto the interface rather than the API endpoint. Assure that APIs return only the information necessary for them to perform their functions. Enforce API-level data access restriction, keep track of the data, and obfuscate it if it contains sensitive information.
Validate Input
Validate input before passing it to an endpoint.
Use Rate Limiting
Set a limit above which all subsequent requests are rejected (For example, 10,000 requests per account per day).
This can help prevent denial of service attacks. Use a firewall for web applications. Make sure it can understand API payloads.
Common Attacks Against Web APIs
For years, defenders of networks and web apps have had to deal with similar attacks. The following are not new attacks, but they can be easily used to attack APIs.
- An SQL injection attack allows an attacker to gain control over an SQL database by injecting malicious commands or code that mislead users who expect normal input from it. These attacks allow an attacker to make off-target queries that give their malicious intent away, forcing users into an unexpected entry field that they expect a normal one for normal input from them.
- Cross-site scripting (XSS) occurs when security vulnerabilities allow an attacker to inject malicious code (often JavaScript) into a web app or webpage by exploiting security weaknesses and injecting a script.
- DDoS attacks are designed to render networks, systems, and websites unavailable for their intended users by overwhelming them with traffic. Now API endpoints have also been included on the list of potential DDoS targets.
- Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks occur when an attacker intercepts communication between two systems and impersonates them both, acting as an invisible intermediary in between. MitM attacks on APIs could occur between apps using them and their respective API or between APIs and their endpoints themselves.
- Credential Stuffing refers to using stolen API credentials to gain entry.
What Is API Security?
API security has become an essential aspect of web security in modern applications and networks since APIs play such an integral part.
Organizations that have experienced compromise from entities they trusted or due to vulnerabilities often turn to the Zero Trust model for protection. Under this approach, humans and computers may only gain access to resources with prior authorization from an admin; monitoring threats will remain essential once authorized access has been given.
APIs are constantly under attack; to protect them from such attacks, implement an effective cybersecurity plan focused on threat prevention, authentication, and authorization to safeguard them.
APIs enable users, IoT devices, and applications to access network resources and sensitive information. Without proper security in place, APIs can easily become attractive targets of attacks that lead to data breaches or compromised networks.
API security aims to ensure API requests can be authenticated, approved, validated, and cleaned while being processed under heavy loads of services.
APIs are widely utilized by modern applications and services using diverse formats and protocols; hence the approach taken with API security differs dramatically from what would typically be found with web servers that only need protecting certain ports/requests/ports/etc.
Security for APIs goes beyond network controls: it also relies on having robustly coded APIs that handle invalid or malicious requests and reject them accordingly, thus safeguarding integrity, confidentiality, and availability of resources exposed by them.
What Does API Security Entail?
Only APIs related to your app can be controlled; security API is specifically focused on APIs exposed directly or indirectly to users; web API security prioritizes APIs consumed by third parties over users because detailed analyses of traffic can reveal valuable insight.
Also noteworthy, API security practices are carried out by multiple security teams and systems, each employing its own set of practices and principles to maintain protection and ensure their implementation.
Network and data protection concepts like rate-limiting are applied alongside identity-based protection concepts like analytics. This makes APIs extremely secure.
Common API Security Risks
When developing an API, it is important to consider the following security issues:
- Broken Object-Level Authorization - BOLA is when an object-level request can modify or access data that the requestor should not have. For example, if a user can gain access to another's account through tampering with the identifier of the request.
- Broken Function-Level Authorization - It occurs when access control policies are overly complicated and the principle of least privilege (POLP), which is to be implemented, still needs to be implemented. This allows an attacker to access sensitive endpoints or execute commands intended for accounts with privileged privileges.
- Broken User Authentication - As with BOLA, if authentication can be compromised, an attacker could pose as another person on a temporary or permanent basis.
- Excessive Data Exposure - API response to a query often returns more data than necessary or relevant. Although the data is not displayed, the information can still be accessed and analyzed. This could lead to sensitive information being exposed.
- Improper Asset Management - In a hurry to launch new APIs or update existing ones, thorough documentation can be overlooked. It can lead to ghost and exposed endpoints as well as an incomplete understanding of older APIs and how they work.
- Rate Limiting And Lack Of Resources - The API endpoints that are typically open on the Internet are vulnerable to DoS attacks and brute force attacks if they are not restricted in terms of size or number.
- Injection Flaws - An attacker could launch an SQL or command injection attack if the request data has not been parsed or validated properly.
- Mass Assignment - Mass assignment is an essential feature of many software development frameworks that allows all data from an online application to be inserted into a database with only one line of code. This eliminates the need for repetitive form mapping code. This opens up a wide range of attacks if the data entered is not specified.
Security Of APIs For Cloud, On-Premises, Or Hybrid Deployments
APIs can now be secured in various ways due to technological innovations. When building APIs, care must be taken about which technology stack is chosen - this has an immediate bearing on their security.
An enterprise may utilize several applications with individual APIs. As organizations combine all their apps into distinct API silos or stacks, API security requirements for any given stack or sil can be directly mapped from its technology.
Security configurations should be highly portable to allow them to adapt easily to ever-evolving technologies.
API security infrastructures have become ubiquitously utilized across diverse environments to define API protection.
Sidecars and sideband agents connect this infrastructure with API silos; consequently, embedded APIs may exist both on-premises as well as in cloud deployment environments.
API Security Layers
API security has many layers. Each layer focuses on a particular API and is intended to achieve a strong and specific protection level.
API Discovery
API discovery is the foundation of API protection. By knowing who or what is attacking, security operatives have a chance of saving your data.
Unfortunately, silos prevent security operatives from seeing all APIs used, their main function being restricting visibility to only part of an API list.
Shadow APIs, or "rogue APIs," pose another significant barrier to API visibility, often when they serve dual roles within application development and implementation.
When these APIs become part of an app but only considered important by certain groups of developers (known as shadow APIs), these details become inaccessible to security operatives who can't see through all implementation details of those shadow APIs.
APIs also have their lifecycle: as APIs evolve or new versions come out, some become deprecated while continuing to function for backward compatibility, becoming obsolete over time and slowly falling out of focus due to low traffic levels.
API discovery has become an intense race between API providers to identify APIs vulnerable to hacker exploits. You can leverage API traffic metadata to discover APIs faster than hackers, extracting data directly from API Gateways, Load Balancers, or network traffic and then sending it into an engine that compiles it into an inventory list that can then be compared against API catalogs available through an API management layer is one way of doing it.
Conclusion
These guidelines help you gain an understanding of API development.
They're essential if you want to enhance user experiences or speed up application marketing processes; companies also benefit by taking advantage of advanced technologies through API use.
These benefits for developers include lower development costs and enhanced experience, more efficient workflow updates using APIs, faster update times, and increased efficiency and flexibility of service provisioning.
