Once you create an API for your module, other application developers can call your API to integrate your functionality into their code. For example, you could develop a module that takes a list of items as input and returns a list of stores where you can purchase the items at the lowest price. An ecommerce application could then use your API to generate a list of daily grocery deals for their customers. As the API creator, you use API keys to restrict and monitor your API access. The API key identifies authorized API usage so you can maintain, manage, and monetize your APIs more efficiently. API calls can also be made from applications written in languages such as Go and Python.

1. This automation reduces manual intervention and ensures that tasks are executed consistently and on schedule.
2. An endpoint is where an API connects with another application, usually in the form of a specific URL or web address.
3. You can use other coding languages, and there are even beginner-friendly API platforms like Postman or RapidAPI (for Macs) that offer user-friendly interfaces for APIs.
4. Now it’s important to note that web APIs can be integrated into other kinds of applications aside from web applications.

Real-World Examples of API Calls

Before we dive into the technical details of calling an API in JavaScript, let’s start with the basics. An API, or Application Programming Interface, is like a bridge that allows two different software systems to communicate with each other. It defines a set of rules and protocols for requesting and exchanging data. In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the process of making API calls in JavaScript, step by step. By the end of this article, you’ll have a solid understanding of how to interact with APIs in your JavaScript projects. When posting questions or answers to websites such as StackOverflow, it is common to post code examples.

For example, say you publish articles on platforms such as Dev.to, Medium, or Hashnode and want to display your work on your portfolio. Instead of manually adding your blogs to your site, you can utilize the platform’s APIs to pull them and add them to your portfolio site. But if you fetch data from an API instead, those changes to the data are automatically updated on your app. This is because third-party APIs often receive updates and improvements and so the app benefits from the additional features and updates. In this article, we’ll be exploring the benefits and use cases of web APIs in development. We’ll also go through the basic steps for integrating an API in an application.

In his free time he loves to watch soccer matches, materiality principle in accounting: definition go on long runs in parks, and explore local restaurants. In this example, we’ll use the OpenWeatherMap API to fetch weather data for a specific location. API calls are typically asynchronous, which means they do not block the execution of your code while waiting for a response. This is important because it allows your web application to remain responsive even when dealing with potentially slow network requests.

If you want to implement one yourself, you’ll first need to find a public API and brush up on your coding knowledge. For step-by-step instructions with visual examples, check out our guide above. Of course, you don’t really need to go to all that trouble when you can just connect your apps using Zapier instead. This three-digit number tells you whether or not your request was successful.

In the same way you use variables for parameterized data, you can also use variables to decouple your secrets from the rest of your code. Storing your API key as a variable allows you to revoke, or refresh, the value in a single spot. There are different variable scopes to suit different use cases. Here’s how to perform a GET request from Gmail’s API using the boilerplate code provided by Google.

thoughts on “Securely using API keys in Postman”

This message, along with the sender’s name and email, will be sent directly to your specified email address. I’m not sure about you, but when I visit an application that requires me to sign up and log in, I prefer being able to log in using a social media platform or Google. Social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram allow developers to include social media login options and share buttons in their apps using APIs. Web APIs enhance users’ experience by offering them services like social media log-in options, geolocation services, weather forecast, and so on. These weather apps installed on people’s phones aren’t storing all the weather data everyone needs every day.

Google Maps has an API for embedding maps and location-oriented services in web pages and mobile applications. This service is billable, but you get $200 free usage per month, which is enough for most applications. Knowing how to use web APIs is an essential concept for developers to learn in order to build interactive applications that enhance user experience. This is a simple app demonstrating how to use APIs in an application. As developers, you might have to build more complex projects that will require you to fetch data from an API. The above example should give you a clue as to how you can do this.

Legal and Security

You also saw two practical examples that demonstrate how to fetch weather data and send form data to a server. Another means of protecting API keys is to use a proxy server. All requests are forwarded to the real API using the API key. As client applications make API calls through a proxy, they do not need to know the API key. Access to the proxy server can be restricted by requiring the client to authenticate.

Looking for a YouTube video that covers everything a backend, frontend, mobile, or app developer needs to know about APIs? One is the App.js or App.jsx that comes by default in React. Cecilia is a content marketer with a degree in Media and Journalism from the University of South Dakota. We’ll email you 1-3 times per week—and never share your information. There are four ways APIs are categorized, each with its own users and privileges. Consider adding expiration to the keys for more robust API security.

The restrictions mean that the key can be made public without compromising security. An obvious, but very poor choice would be to put it into the Info.plist file. This is a poor choice because Info.plist will almost certainly get checked into a repository, which may be public.

Open APIs

Unfortunately, there can be times when an API provider has listed an API that does not provide the functionality advertised. If you see different results or data than what the API is advertising, please contact You will need to add an API key to each request so that the API can identify you.

Having spent a relatively short period of time studying them, you can use them to widely extend the capabilities of your own application. To learn more about endpoints, we will look at another example, this time within the RapidAPI service. Speaking a little more formally, API is an interface that allows your application to interact with an external service using a simple set of commands. You can teach your application the rules of this language, so it can communicate with the service and access all the functions and data that the service is ready to share. So far, we’ve focused on making GET requests, which are used to fetch data from an API. But you may also need to send data to an API, which you can do using POST requests.

While they offer a level of security, it’s still important to be cautious because these keys can be shared with unauthorized third parties. An API key is issued by an API provider and given to a registered API consumer, who includes it with each request. The API server then checks the API key to validate the consumer’s identity before returning the requested data.