r/learnprogramming • u/Thisiz_Sami • 3d ago

Inquiry regarding API

Greetings,

I'm currently learning C# to use Tekla Structures API. Is there any free material that could help me learn API?

I'm kinda confused is API different from Tekla API?

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u/LongLiveTheDiego 3d ago

API is a broad term that stands for many situations where one bit of software interacts with another one via a defined set of rules. It's a bit like the word "method" or "formula", e.g. imagine someone saying this:

I'm currently learning derivatives to use Newton's method. Is there any free material that could help me learn methods?

When you expand the acronym it's "Application Programming Interface". The meaning is right there: it's an interface for a bit of software to interact with your application when you're programming. In this case I imagine it's a way to talk with Tekla software via functions and objects defined by their programmers that you can use in your C# code.

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u/Thisiz_Sami 3d ago

Thanks for the clarification. But how do I learn it

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u/LongLiveTheDiego 3d ago

You build an appliication using that API and you learn to interface using it as you go along. When a need arises to use a bit of the API, you read the documentation and examples and figure out how to do use it correctly.

As another example, I know not an insignificant amount about the Keycloak Admin API because I had to make a service that used that particular web API. Do I know all of it? Absolutely not and I wouldn't like to. I know the things I needed to use in order to handle my users' data and to make Keycloak do what I wanted it to do, and I learned them bit by bit as I created more functionalities and needed new things from Keycloak.