An API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of methods and tools that allows one application to interact with another. Developers typically use APIs to pull data and functionality from other applications into their own. For example, the Google Maps API allows programmers to display custom maps in their own applications.

Developers can use APIs to create plugins that add functionality to WordPress. For example, Twitter plugins use the Twitter API to generate tweets from within WordPress. Other plugins use the Google Analytics API to create and customize reports for WordPress sites.

Programmers can then use the WordPress API to seamlessly integrate their plugins with the WordPress platform.

There are different types of APIs. Most WordPress plugins are based on Web APIs, which use the Internet to send communications back and forth between applications. They typically send requests and responses in either JSON or XML. Other types of APIs use Python, Java, or another programming language.

 

{{{
{ "stat": "ok",
 "current_page": 1,
"items": [
   {
     "status": "warped",
     "map_type": "is_map",
     "updated_at": "2010/03/25 10:52:42 -0400",
    "title": "A chart of Delaware Bay and River : containing a full and exact description of the shores, creeks, harbours, soundings, shoals, sands, and bearings of the most considerable land marks \u0026c. \u0026c. / faithfully coppied [sic] from that published at Philadelphia",
     "id": 6985,
     "description": "from A new edition, much enlarged, of the second part of the North American pilot, for New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and the Havanna : including general charts of the British Ch",
     "height": 4744,
     "nypl_digital_id": "1030125",
     "mask_status": null,
     "bbox": "-75.9831134505588,38.552727388127,-73.9526411829395,40.4029389105122",
     "width": 5875,
     "created_at": "2008/06/28 18:19:34 -0400"
   },

   {
     "status":
...

}],"total_pages":132,"per_page":10,"total_entries":1314}
}}}

A response from the New York Public Library’s MapWarper API, in JSON. It provides information about a map in the library’s collection.