What Is an API?
An application programming interface (API) defines the way that software components should interact with each other, allowing different applications to communicate with each other and share data and functionality and allowing developers to create new applications that can leverage the functionality of existing software or services.
APIs can be used for a wide range of purposes, including integrating with third-party services, building modular and scalable applications and creating custom user interfaces or experiences. They are often used in web development, mobile app development and in the integration of different enterprise systems.
The growth in popularity of web APIs—typically published as a set of publicly-reachable endpoints using the HTTP protocol and designed to be accessed over the internet using web-based technologies such as HTML and JavaScript—spurred the development of API gateway technologies to provide a unified way to manage access to those APIs.
The increased adoption of microservices-based cloud-native architectures and Kubernetes as [an orchestration platform] [TODO: tie in Kubernetes, Envoy Gateway, and service mesh].