Thanks for diving back into your transformation from Business User to Citizen Developer with Build Apps. In the previous blog we explored how to leverage conditional logic within your applications. In this blog I will explain what REST APIs are in SAP Build Apps and why they are important.
By definition, an Application Programming Interface, or API, is a set of functions or procedures that allow for the creation of applications that access features or data of an operating system, application or other services. In simpler terms, an API is software that acts as a means of communication between 2 systems:
Think of this as a phone that allows communication between 2 people. Before making a phone call you must know the phone number of the person that you are trying to call and input this number into the phone:
In the same way APIs need specific configurations so that it knows which 2 applications to connect. For example, imagine that you have a backend database and you need to transfer data between your Appgyver application and this database. An API will act as middleware between the database and your application in order to make this transfer possible. You must specify the endpoint URL of the backend that you are trying to reach in the API configuration.
Representational State Transfer or Rest is an architecture that can be implemented in an API. Let’s compare this architecture to making use of WhatsApp. Rest APIs must conform to the following constraints:
As an AppGyver Citizen Developer, the main constraint to think about is the use of a uniform interface. The results of this constraint will allow you to perform 4 main operations in your data backend. These are:
REST APIs are a light-weight, easy to use way of connecting your application to other resources. This makes them perfect for the Citizen Developer to get started with. Now that you understand what a REST API is and how it works, we will take a look at how configuring one would look in practice in the next blog.
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