If you are a non-technical person who’s ever asked a software developer what an API is, their answer might have left you with more questions than answers. That’s because it’s difficult to explain an API without being overly simplistic—or, at the other end of the spectrum, without introducing related concepts that can get abstract and technical very quickly.
An API, which stands for Application Programmer’s Interface, is a way that computer programs (or components within those programs) interact with one another. Although APIs exist in every programming language, the term is most commonly used today to refer to web APIs. The internet is made of these APIs. They’re everywhere.
In 2020, Lunch Money first opened up access to our public API. This gave developers enormous flexibility over what they could do with Lunch Money data, resulting in some very cool projects that have been shared with the wider community.
Ultimately, having a developer API means that all of our users have access to a suite of mobile apps and tools that extend what you can do with Lunch Money. We’ll talk a little bit more about some of these later on! First, we’re going to delve a little deeper into the notion of an API to explain why it’s foundational to the growth and innovation of our product.
How you’re using APIs
To understand why APIs are so powerful, consider some few of the ways that you commonly interact with and experience them:
Say you’re ordering food from a new app. You might have the option to login using your Gmail credentials instead of manually entering your email address and choosing a new password, saving you the time and energy of choosing a new password. That food delivery site just ‘called’ Google’s sign-in API.
Perhaps you use Slack at work and get updates about ticket changes in Asana in your #updates channel. As a user, this minimizes the amount of time you have to spend switching apps. For this to work, a developer used the Asana APIs to create an integration between Slack and Asana.
If you’ve ever bought or even searched for a flight on Kayak, you will see tons of results from different airlines and travel sites. Kayak doesn’t have that information stored in its own database—it’s calling different APIs to aggregate results from different sources.
What’s happening beneath the surface
APIs are sometimes described as ‘black boxes.’ Beneath this metaphor is a bundle of code that’s been engineered to provide a certain output when given a certain input. They are the internet’s way of allowing programs to Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD) data across systems.
CRUD is the basic building block of all web programs:
- Your email provider has APIs to send (create) and receive (read) emails. When you change the status of an email, like marking it as spam, that’s an update. Delete sends an email into the abyss.
- When you change your Netflix profile from your phone, the app sends a request to the server to update the fields in their database so when you login from your laptop, you can see the same changes.
- Website aggregators like Kayak and Booking.com use an API to read data data from multiple sources.
Why developers love APIs
Developers are interested in APIs for several reasons. Firstly, APIs allow them to build custom solutions to meet specific needs. Instead of being limited by the default functionalities of a software application, developers can use APIs to tailor an app or its data to their requirements.
Secondly, APIs enable the automation of tasks. For example, a developer might use an API to automatically update a database with information from another system, reducing the need for manual data entry. This not only saves significant time, it reduces the risk of human error.
Thirdly, APIs support data portability, which is crucial for users who value the ownership and transferability of their data. This allows users to move their data between different systems easily, ensuring they are not locked into a single vendor’s ecosystem.
How the Lunch Money API supports community-driven development
By opening up a public API, Lunch Money enables third-party development to fill the needs that our official team may not have the bandwidth to prioritize. This is how we keep our running costs low: As a company, Lunch Money aims to run lean while maximizing the user experience.
We are lucky to have a developer-heavy user base. By fostering a community of developers, we’re supporting the development of an ecosystem of apps, tools, and plug-ins built around Lunch Money. These new tools not only enhance functionality, they contribute to the longevity and sustainability of the company.
At Lunch Money, we know that everyone’s needs are different and that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to budgeting. That’s demonstrated in the diversity of products our community have built. Some of these projects include tools that import transactions from banks that don’t work well with Plaid. We’ve also had community members build mobile versions of Lunch Money that run on both Android (Lunch Money Companion) and iOS (Lunch Money Pal) devices. There are a variety of projects which act as a bridge to other services, to help you categorize Amazon transactions more easily, or import from Splitwise, or access services in different languages.
Our goal is to continue to invest heavily in our developer ecosystem. We are shining the spotlight every month on a different community member’s project, built with the Lunch Money API. Community collaboration is part of what makes our product versatile, dynamic, and continually improving. The API helps power that community.
Are you just starting out in software development? Stay tuned next week when we’ll release a simple tutorial for anyone who’s interested in the technical basics of working for the Lunch Money API.
