How To Create An API? (10 Tutorials)

15 Jul 2009

Behind almost every successful web application, there is an easy-to-use & feature-rich API as they simply help the main application to spread into others & reached by more users.

Also, an API-enabled application can be easily developed further using the API itself.

In order to create an API for your web application, here are 10 tutorials to get you started. But before that, you may want to checkout the video: How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters by Google.

PHP

Create a REST API with PHP

A very detailed yet easy-to-implement tutorial on creating a REST API with PHP.

And, there is a follow-up article: "Making RESTful Requests in PHP" by the same author which can guide you as well.

How to Add an API to your Web Service (PHP)

A detailed tutorial which describes the concepts like REST, SOAP & creates an API step-by-step with PHP.

Implement a Rest API with the Zend Framework

This example utilizes controllers in an MVC style application. Most of the stuff is handled by an instance of Zend_Rest_Server so it shows implementing to our service.

Creating a Simple REST API With VB, PHP and MySQL

This article covers both creating an API with PHP where the data is stored in a MySQL database & reaching to the API with a VBScript file.

Create Your Own Custom API (PHP)

The tutorial describes a PHP API returning XML data in 6 steps:

Create Your Own Custom API
Developing the basic API layout
The Client
The Server
The Server Class
The "Test" Step

Towards RESTful PHP – 5 Basic Tips

Ok, this is not a tutorial but includes very handy tips that can be used when creating a REST API with PHP for the security & ease of usage of the API.

Rails

Creating Open Web APIs: Exploring REST and WOA in Rails 2.0

Creating Open Web APIs

As Rails automatically offers URL addressable resources for all the data in a Rails web application, every Rails application already has a ready-to-go RESTful API". The tutorial explains how to use it in detail.