Google, Facebook & other big names now offer home-baked APIs to power up your app development. Let’s take a quick look at how API integration benefits you.

​Is your software development cycle having issues meeting deadlines and roadmap milestones? Then you may want to look at how you can streamline your development process itself. ​​One solution that you may find useful is API or Application Programming Interface Integration.

APIs are powerful software functions and procedures that have the potential to greatly reduce the amount of work and time involved in developing software. By integrating them into your development process, you can help your developers achieve a faster turnaround time with their projects.

In this article, we’ll talk about what API Integration is, and all the ways API integration benefits developers — as well as the development cycle in general.

What is API Integration?

API integration is just what it says — the integration of APIs into an application or software that is currently in development. An API is a specialized set of standardized rules, functions, methods and protocols that facilitate the communication between two separate software applications or components.

This standardization allows for the easy and efficient development of APIs, which contributes to a faster application development process. What’s more, API integration has also resulted in the establishment of a growing database of public, open APIs that any developer can use without charge or for a small fee.

Many huge online entities such as eBay, Twitter, Facebook, and others have also released their home-baked APIs so that the global developing community can make their applications, big or small, work with their web platforms.

API integration benefits:

Knowing the above, adding API integration into your development cycle can bring you the following benefits:

Gain access to powerful programming tools

Many of the APIs developed today are developed using a specification known as OpenAPI. OpenAPI provides a common framework for designers, developers, testers, and users to build and maintain APIs. It is also language agnostic, which means that any API or service created with it is easily readable by both humans and computers. This is all without the need for source code access, extensive documentation, or inspection of network traffic.

This results in your developers getting access to a powerful software developing language that is easy to utilize and encourages collaboration from the global coding community. It also means that you can take advantage of the OpenAPI Specification Toolkit for developers, which is a growing library of open-source tools designed to aid in the effortless and automated creation, modification, and testing of APIs.

Reduce developer workload and strain

One of the biggest benefits of integrating APIs into your development process is that it significantly reduces the amount of work your developers will have to do to get your application running. As stated earlier, APIs standardize the way two separate software components talk to each other.

This means that your developers won’t have to code an interface platform for those two components from scratch — all they need is to either develop an API on their own or simply take from the growing database of open APIs available to the public. This lightens the strain on your developers and allows them to work on what makes your application unique and marketable.

Eliminate dependencies and missing resources

Integrating APIs can eliminate dependencies and missing elements in the development and testing parts of the cycle. This can be done through API mocking.

For example, if a particular software component required for testing or development is unavailable for any reason, then all your developers have to do is to mock the specific API needed to communicate with the rest of the other components. The mocked API will then simulate the presence of the missing component by sending the needed responses the same component was supposed to transmit.

You can even leverage this API mocking solution to allow your developers to code offline, by simply mocking APIs to simulate callbacks and responses from online APIs or resources. All this results in a more agile and efficient development cycle.

API integration streamlines your development process

Do not underestimate API integration. It is more than just another IT and software development trend. It has the ability to drastically improve and streamline your development process, as well as eliminate dependencies that can delay your app-building and testing phases.

Smart developers and companies like yours that want to keep up with competitors and level the playing field should seriously consider API integration — or risk being left behind.

If you’re looking to enhance your knowledge of API integration and the API development cycle, visit the Stoplight website and learn more about it. Stoplight offers relevant API products and resources for individual developers and enterprise-level companies looking to improve their respective API and app development process.