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API Basics Everything you needed to know about APIs and APIContext (but were afraid to ask) If you’re even marginally around the tech world, you’ve probably heard of APIs. They’re an integral part of pretty much everything you do online, whether it’s on a computer or in an app. So, it’s natural that you want...
Everything you needed to know about APIs and APIContext (but were afraid to ask)
If you’re even marginally around the tech world, you’ve probably heard of APIs. They’re an integral part of pretty much everything you do online, whether it’s on a computer or in an app. So, it’s natural that you want to know more about them. Our API Information Knowledge Base is designed to help guide you through.
For example – what the heck is an API? What kinds of API data are there? How can you test it before you go live, and how can you monitor an API to make sure it’s doing what you want it to do?
And what is something called REST?! Sounds like it’s slacking off.
So, you have questions. And lucky for you, here at APIContext, we’ve got answers. Answers to questions you were embarrassed to ask, and even some questions you didn’t know you needed to ask.
So without further ado, please check out our knowledge base, linked to the left. And make sure to visit every once in a while, as we’ll be adding more so you can talk about APIs with confidence – no matter who you are!
Even if it’s your job to explain them to others, these articles might give you some help in doing so. They’re written for people who are not experts.
And if you want to know about some specific we haven’t covered here, then just let us know – we’re here to help. Happy reading!
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Knowledge Base
Catalog · 12 entriesAPI Basics Everything you needed to know about APIs and APIContext (but were afraid to ask) If you’re even marginally around the tech world, you’ve probably heard of APIs. They’re an integral part of pretty much everything you do online, whether it’s on a computer or in an app. So, it’s natural that you want...
API Testing: Frequently Asked Questions
In API testing you test the various components of the API both directly and in action with the site itself.
What Is An API?
API Knowledge Base What Is An API? Knowing what an API is and what it does is important. So in this article we are going to answer the question: “What is an API?” If you spend any time dealing with web development or programming, you are eventually going to hear the term API. To the uninitiated,...
RESTful APIs Explained
API Knowledge Base RESTful APIs Figuring out what a REST or RESTful API is sounds difficult. But really, it’s not. If you are involved in web development – or if you are in charge of web developers – you’ll likely to hear people talk about REST APIs. But you might not be sure exactly what...
Cloud APIs
If your business wants to use the cloud in any way, you are going to have to work with cloud APIs. The good news is that the concept isn’t that difficult once you start to think about it. The trick is to get your head around the concept and go from there.
API Examples
If some companies just made a little more effort and investment in their APIs, the results of these API examples would look very different.
REST API
In this article, we’re going to spend some time explaining exactly what a REST API is, why you probably want it for your website, and its ability to communicate with the outside world.
Bank APIs
They are the building blocks of any online transaction with the bank. Let’s take a look at some common bank API issues.
Understanding the API Economy
If you’re even marginally around the tech world, you’ve probably heard of APIs. APIs are an integral part of pretty much everything you do online, whether it’s on a computer or in an app. So, it’s natural that you want to know more about them.
API Monitoring Basics
API monitoring can look at the way users actually interface with your API so you can build solutions that address the way your site really works as opposed to how you would like it to work.
API Tutorials
Creating and using APIs doesn’t have to be that hard. We scoured the web and found some of the best API tutorials around that can help you get started.
Government APIs
What are we talking about when we discuss API data? When it comes to government APIs we are talking about publicly available information.
Open APIs
You don’t need to build them from scratch. Use Open API software to create the API you want. This will save your time and money. Someone else has already done the work for you!
Understanding APIs
Foundations · 10 entriesUnderstanding APIs Guide An API ecosystem is complex and vast, as are the critical technologies that make APIContext the most advanced API Monitoring solution on the market. This guide covers everything from how monitoring fits into your DevOps world, what other technologies you ought to be looking at and what are the critical technologies behind...
API Gateway
API Gateway What is an API gateway and how is APIContext different? An API gateway allows API providers to manage and control their APIs reliably and at scale. It manages access, policy and traffic controls, and handles run-time activities including routing and authentication. A gateway typically provides functionality across five broad areas: access control cloud-native...
API Ratings
REST API Rating and Reporting You may think you are monitoring your APIs, but what about the services you buy via API from other people, how do you go about rating APIs? How are you measuring the quality of those APIs and the services you use every day? Do you rely on the supplier to...
API Monitoring For Dummies
API Monitoring for Dummies API Monitoring – the basics With the average enterprise now using over 1000 APIs, why are we still being asked what is API Monitoring and how to do it? The reason is simple, it’s a complex topic that that falls between different groups inside the enterprise and can lead to a variety...
Service Level Objectives
SLO (Service Level Objectives) V. SLAs SLO: how to define and measure a Service Level Objective and how that relates to a Service Level Agreement. This is a complicated field with a lot of moving parts so buckle up and we’ll cover the key concepts. Reliability Engineering APIContext is a tool for monitoring the performance...
APIContext Global Coverage
Global Monitoring Network Global Monitoring for a containerized world For a cross-cloud, containerized world, APIContext offers the only Global Monitoring Network built for the needs of modern cloud solutions. Not only that but if the locations we provide aren’t good enough, then we provide our users the option to deploy their own. Truly Cross Cloud...
Advanced API Monitoring
Why API Monitoring? Why API monitoring? It’s a good question. After all, companies and DevOps groups use LOTS of different API monitoring tools. There’s the tool suite that come with their Amazon or Microsoft Cloud instance. There are stack monitoring tools for their backend, like New Relic or App Dynamics. There are the tools built into Axway or Apigee...
Why API Monitoring – Problems
Why API Monitoring Matters The Problems at the Coalface We regularly get the question: why should I monitor my APIs separately? After all, we’ve had REST APIs for a long time now, relatively speaking and we have a variety of solutions in place for IT monitoring – whether it’s a cloud server monitoring, a stack monitoring...
KPIs for APIs – Key Performance Indicators
API KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) Defining API KPIs (key performance indicators) being used is a critical part of understanding not just how they work but how well they can work and the impact they have on your services, users or partners. But what do you look at and track when measuring API KPIs? Some API...
CASC – Cloud API Service Consistency Score
What Is CASC Scoring? CASC scoring deals with one of the challenges of understanding what your Key Performance Indicators KPIs for APIs are telling you – how you come to terms, easily and quickly with large amounts of data in a meaningful way. This has been recognized before with systems like Apdex, but these have...
SLA for APIs: Monitoring Your API SLA (Service Level Agreement)
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) For APIs APIs are critical to your business operations and services. But how do you measure an SLA and manage that process? With many different factors going into an SLA, which ones do you choose to highlight? What does true agreement look like? What are the ins and outs of API...
APIContext User Guide
Product · 15 entriesAPIContext User Guide APIContext can meet your monitoring needs for your API stacks. These guides help outline some of the key features and services that we offer, including guides to how to use us for certain types of monitoring like Open Banking or SLA tracking. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, don’t hesitate...
API Monitoring Frequency – how much is too much?
APIContext Guides API Monitoring Frequency How much is too much? There are many schools of thought on the frequency you should monitor your APIs, but there’s no one specific answer to the question of what is the right API monitoring frequency. APImetrics offers a wide range of options from essentially every second through to a...
Tutorial: Handling Microsoft Graph API Auth
APIContext Guides Handling Microsoft Graph API Auth making secure API calls to Microsoft Graph API Endpoints Microsoft Graph APIs are at the heart of everything Microsoft does but they’re not entirely straight forward to monitor or even call successfully – something even Microsoft can struggle with. Fortunately, this is a relatively easy problem to solve....
APIContext Case Study Power Utility
APImetrics Guides How a power utility uses APIContext to monitor their APIs First Utility (Now Shell Energy) uses APIContext to Increase Throughput Without Increasing Capacity First Utility is one of the UK’s largest and fastest growing independent energy providers. Since beginning operations in 2009, the company has rapidly built a loyal following by offering homeowners...
APIContext Case Study Government APIs
APImetrics Guides How a government agency benefits from APIContext The government of New Zealand Ministry of Business Innovation and Enterprise uses APIContext to monitor their critical APIs. BACKGROUND The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is the government’s lead business-facing agency. Its purpose is to grow the New Zealand economy to provide a better...
Automated Postman Collection Monitoring
APIContext Guides Postman Collection Monitoring Seamless Postman Collection Monitoring with APIContext APIContext has partnered with our friends at Postman to take Postman collection monitoring to the next level, with a completely automated solution that lets you take full advantage of the APIContext global network of Cross-Cloud agents and the ease of Postman’s collection management tools....
Make an API Call
APIContext Guides Make Your First API Call At a simple level, if you can type a URL into a browser, you can make an API call with APIContext. In fact, there’s a lot in common between what happens when you make an API call and when you go to a webpage – APIs are involved...
APIContext AI-Based Reporting and Analytics
APIContext Guides APIContext AI-Based Reporting and Analytics There are plenty of API metrics that can be generated – but what are they really telling you? APIContext has spent years focused on the key questions about API performance and bringing AI based reporting to API monitoring in a single monitoring and reporting product. This is so...
Tutorial: Schedule API Calls
APIContext Guides Scheduling API Calls Monitoring isn’t terribly useful if you have to individually run a call at a time, so we have a scheduling system to make repeated calls. With the APIContext scheduler you can: Set the frequency you want to call your APIs at – this can be from once per second per...
Types of API Calls
APIContext Guides Types of API Calls Supported by APIContext APIContext currently supports the following common types of API calls in use in Service Orientated Architectures (SOA), mobile application development, SaaS (Software as a Service) and similar systems. APIs allow different systems to communicate with each other. It lets a mobile app talk to a social network, or a...
PSD2
APIContext Guides What is PSD2 (and what does it have to do with APIs?) What is PSD2 (and what does it have to do with APIs?) A new European Union directive has come into force that will eventually change the way people bank as we know it. It’s called PSD2 (Revised Payment Service Directive), and...
API Monitoring Features
APIContext Guides API Call Monitoring Features Reporting, alerting, analysis and more. APIContext offers a complete suite for API call monitoring. Dive into our detailed features – but first, check out this summary of what you can do. Create and run real API calls. Just like users and partners do. Set up and run REST &...
Who Uses APIContext
APIContext Guides Who Uses APIContext? You might think that APIContext is *just* a technical product for a technical user base. Well, it can be. But we have users across all aspects of the digital business – from the developers who build APIs and the DevOps teams who manage them, up to the C suite. So...
Free API Tools
Tools · 12 entriesFree API Tools APIContext offers a free set of tools and datasets to help with decision making for your APIs – in addition to our Knowledge Base, we have dashboards of standard API performance and free regional data. We also provide a complete network of API reference servers to test against which provide insight into...
Cross Cloud API Latency Analysis
Cross Cloud API Latency – Google Agent Network This APIContext API latency heat map shows relative performance of a standard, reference GET request made to servers running on all the Google locations and via the Google global load balancer. Calls are made from AWS, Azure, IBM and Google clouds, and data is stored for all...
HTTPbin Network
FREE API Tools Free Test API Online APIContext provides a network of HTTPbin servers to use as free test API servers. These can be called from a variety of locations to measure overall performance from many locations without any security or setup. Create a free APIContext Trial Account – No Credit Card Needed to use our free...
US Government API Ratings Dashboards
FREE API Tools API Ratings: US Government APIContext tracks the performance of of leading US government API ratings that developers and citizens rely on from data centers around the world. We provide API Rating and Ranking data including overall quality, latency and up-time. We also provide free, real-time availability data. US Government API Rating Dashboard...
UK Government API Ratings Dashboards
FREE API Tools API Ratings: UK Government APIs APIContext tracks the performance of UK Government API ratings that are used by leading UK government departments. Which should you use? Which work best? We have free reports with the answers. UK Government API Rating Dashboard includes: GOV.UK Police.uk Met Office NHS
Social Networking API Ratings Dashboards
FREE API Tools API Ratings: Social Networking APIs API Ratings: Social Networking APIs APIContext tracks the performance of leading Social Networking API ratings that are used by hundreds of millions of people everyday. Which should you use? Which work best – we have free reports with the answers. Social Networking API Rating Dashboard includes: Reddit...
Search API Ratings Dashboards
FREE API Tools API Ratings: Search APIs API Ratings: Search APIs APIContext tracks the performance of leading Search API ratings that are used by hundreds of millions of people everyday. Which should you use? Which work best? We have free reports with the answers. Search API Rating Dashboard includes: Google Bing Foursquare
PSD2 Sandbox API Ratings Dashboards
FREE API Tools API Ratings: PSD2 Sandbox APIs API Ratings: PSD2 Sandbox APIs APIContext tracks the performance of leading PSD2 Sandbox API ratings that are used by leading open banking and fintech solutions. We provide API Rating and Ranking data including overall quality, latency and up-time. We also provide free, real-time availability data. PSD2 Sandbox...
Cryptocurrency Exchange API Ratings Dashboards
FREE API Tools API Ratings: Cryptocurrency Exchanges API Ratings: Cryptocurrency Exchanges APIContext tracks the performance of a large number of cryptocurrency exchange API ratings that developers and traders rely on from data centers around the world. Providing API Rating and Ranking data including overall quality, latency and up-time. We also provide free, real-time availability data....
COVID19 API Ratings Dashboards
FREE API Tools API Ratings: COVID19 APIs API Ratings: COVID19 APIs APIContext tracks the performance of leading COVID19 API ratings that people are relying on to track the pandemic. Providing API Rating and Ranking data including overall quality, latency and up-time. We also provide free, real-time availability data. COVID19 API Rating Dashboard includes: CDC The...
Corporate API Ratings Dashboards
FREE API Tools API Ratings: Corporate Infrastructure APIContext tracks the performance of hundreds of corporate APIs that developers and businesses rely on from data centers around the world. Providing API Rating and Ranking data including overall quality, latency and up-time. We also provide free, real-time availability data. Corporate API Rating Dashboard includes: Microsoft Google Salesforce...
CMA9 Open Data API Ratings Dashboards
FREE API Tools API Ratings: CMA9 Open Data APIs APIContext tracks the performance of the CMA9 Open Data API ratings that are mandated by the FCA for the leading UK banks to provide real data on products, branch locations and ATMs. We providing API Rating and Ranking data including overall quality, latency and up-time. We...
API Ratings Dashboards
FREE API Tools API Ratings Dashboard In addition to monitoring your critical APIs and providing insights into how they function, APIContext can provide detailed ratings, rankings and analysis on APIs you use, depend or are interested in. We host free public API reports and we have a variety of interesting datasets to explore that update...