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CHAPTER 4: JavaScript and APIs > Creating an API
Creating an API
When creating an API it's important to think how you're going to use it. For our app, Grandview Ave, I use it for two things, simplifying application design for multiple devices and to publish data to multiple web sites and apps. Let's list these below.
- Mobile iPad site
- Mobile iPhone site
- Other mobile site (Android and Blackberry)
- Native iPhone app
- Native iPad app
- Native Android app
Data-Centric Usage
- Publish HTML content to mobile site
- Publish business category data
- Publish business detail data
- Sales and specials
- Near Me functionality
- Parking data
The back-end for your API can be anything you want; for my examples I use PHP to create a RESTful web service or API.
REST (Representation State Transfer) REST basically means that you have a URL where you can GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE data. The URL defines the data, and the methods define what you want to do with them.