Open API

Open API is a third-party API that is open to use. There are plenty of them available out there. Companies are eager to open their APIs to expand their user base but at the same time keep their source code proprietary. These APIs can be accessible by us as well. Let's take a look at some of the APIs from Facebook.

For example, we can use the HTTP GET method to access https://graph.facebook.com/{page_id}/feed, which will give us the feeds on the Facebook page with ID = {page_id}. We can send an HTTP request using the POST method to https://graph.facebook.com/{page_id}/feed, and then we can create a post on the Facebook page with ID = {page_id}.

Note

The Facebook fans page API details can be found at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/pages/publishing.

Now, let's look at another internet giant, Google. Google also provides some Gmail APIs that we can use to manage the email labels in our mailbox. Here is a screenshot from the Gmail API documentation:

Figure 1.3: Gmail API documentation

Note

The Gmail Label API is available at https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/v1/reference/.