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Application Programming Interface (API)

An API is a set of functions and procedures allowing the creation of applications that access the features or data of another service.

There are several API protocols: REST, RPC, gRPC, GraphQL, SOAP, etc.

They are sometimes supported directly by PHP, with extensions, or via components. There is usually a client version, used to connect to a remote API, and a server version, to host a service based on this protocol.

<?php

// Consuming a REST API with cURL
$ch = curl_init('https://api.example.com/users/1');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, [
    'Authorization: Bearer your-api-token',
    'Accept: application/json',
]);

$response = curl_exec($ch);
$statusCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($ch);

if ($statusCode === 200) {
    $data = json_decode($response, true);
    echo $data['name'];
}

?>

Documentation

See Also