What is an API?

API stands for Application Programming interface and is a way for software components and web application to ‘talk’ to each other and exchange data between separate systems. API integrations allow web applications to extend their functionality by collecting data from external sources. APIs are also a way that large software systems can be broken into microservices to enable more flexible and agile software development processes.

What are some different types of APIs?

REST (Representational State Transfer)
REST APIs follow a set of rules that make these types of APIs a lot easier to work with; at the core a REST api requires URLs that respond to a HTTP requests (usually GET or POST) with a piece of data or resource. This data is often formatted in Javascript Object Notation (JSON) markup. RESTful apis are common among open source and public APIs.

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
This is an API that can use any operating system or communication protocol, not just HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). All SOAP api requests and responses use Extensible Markup Language (XML).

Browser API
Browser APIs enable webpages to interact with the web browser to enhance the user interface of a website, ie, playing music, using a webcam or interacting with other parts of the web browser’s system.

Android / iOS APIs
Allow mobile apps to interact with a smart phone’s hardware, ie take photos of a completed job, log the location of a technician or display a notification of that needs urgent attention.

Telematic API Examples

Verizon Connect has a variety of web APIs to help 3rd party software to share data with our Reveal and Fleet telematics platforms. Software developers will need obtain credentials before they can start making API calls to our web services. Some examples of API use are:

pull job details from your ERP system and add ETA and delivery details back into your ERP system
combine driver performance data with existing HR systems and records
add vehicle usage data into your maintenance management system
import vehicle mileage data into your ERP software to calculate depreciation for accounting purposes
match vehicle usage with fuel card transactions to uncover fraudulent use.

To find out more about how our APIs work and to get started creating an API integration here.

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