🍽️ APIs Explained Like You're 5

Source: Dev.to

The Restaurant Analogy

Imagine you’re at a restaurant. You don’t walk into the kitchen to cook your own food.

You → Waiter → Kitchen

• You tell the waiter what you want
• The waiter goes to the kitchen
• The kitchen prepares your order
• The waiter brings it back

The waiter is the API!

In Tech Terms

Your app doesn’t talk directly to servers. It uses an API:

Your App → API → Server/Database

The API:

• Takes your request
• Talks to the system you can’t access directly
• Returns the data you need

Real Example

Your weather app doesn’t have weather stations. It asks:

Weather App: "Hey Weather API, what's the weather in Sydney?"
Weather API: "25°C and sunny ☀️"

That’s it. Your app gets data without knowing how it was measured.

Why It Matters

APIs let different programs talk to each other:

• Google Maps API → Embed maps in any app
• Stripe API → Accept payments
• Twitter API → Show tweets on your site

You don’t rebuild Google Maps. You just ask their API.