APIs – Apocalyptic Penguin Invasion?

If you’ve had a conversation with me recently and find yourself reading this, you may be wondering why I’ve been talking to you about an imminent penguin invasion when you thought we were talking about some kind of data thingy that does some kind of data-ry stuff.

You may also be rethinking your life choices and wondering which one of us should seek help first.

Alas, APIs are nowhere near as exciting and do not involve any kind of aquatic bird – no matter how cute they are.

APIs – or Application Programming Interfaces…

…is one of those tech things, that people may have heard of but is usually shrouded in some mystery.

You know how I love an analogy, well stand back folks, because there’s one incoming.

Go back to your childhood and imagine you have been equipped with two plastic cups and a length of string. You punch a hole in the bottom of each cup, thread the string through, tie a couple of knots and then you and your BFF will proceed to shout into one cup whilst listening in the other.

This is like an API, minus the plasters from stabbing the hole in your finger as well as the cup. We should also leave out the bit where you’re only stood four feet apart and could easily hear each other without the cup string combo.

Let’s say you have two differing platforms, both collect data, but each platform is different. However, you want some data to go from platform A to platform B and in turn you may want some to go from B to A.

First of all you set up your two plastic cups at either end of the connection. These are pieces of code that tell platform A what to send and in what format, to platform B. You do the same with the cup over on platform B.

When the API feed goes live, the data is captured by one cup and fed down the string to the other cup and vice versa.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we just put everything into one platform?

Well yes, but that’s just not possible. There are many reasons for not putting everything in one place. The two ends might have completely different purposes which mean they couldn’t reliably or effectively coexist. Or it could be that you don’t want everyone to have access to stuff they shouldn’t have. A good example that covers both of these situations is with a fundraising CRM and service user helpline platform. These are two very different things, have specific functionality requirements and you absolutely would not want everyone seeing what was recorded in the helpline system. What you might want is a small piece of curated information on the fundraising CRM to say that this person is also currently an active helpline user, allowing you to tailor your fundraising comms appropriately.

For most of us we don’t need to worry about what the code is or any of the technical stuff. Understanding that data can be passed between platforms is enough, and opens up a whole host of different options that don’t require a wholesale migration of all data into one gargantuan system (that will probably never work very well, for anyone). Yes, there will be a cost for putting in place an API, yes it will need some work to think through the logic (the detail of what data flows where), but it’s often a more satisfactory and achievable solution than doing nothing or changing everything.

APIs present us with boundless possibilities, it’s up to us to recognise what they might be. But rest assured, I don’t think any of them will involve penguins.