What Is an API and How Can I Use It for My Business?

Have you heard the term eSignature API come up lately?

With the constant advancements of technology, and the perpetually changing needs of consumers, businesses and employees can feel like they are constantly in the process of catching up. To maintain relevance, meet functionality demands, and establish a business as having something solid to offer it’s customer base, software developers and business owners will often find themselves spending countless hours building and designing applications and solutions.

This is where APIs can help.

APIs are being increasingly used by developers to give their companies important advantages. Below, we’ll take a closer look at what APIs are, how they work, and how they can be used to take eSigning to the next level.

An API, or Application Programming Interface, is something you probably already use every single day without even realizing it. Think of APIs as messengers; their job is to help two different applications communicate. Delving in a bit further, companies essentially use APIs to enable other third-party developers and apps to connect with and use their data and functionality.

Not only are APIs increasingly popular in tech, but they are also somewhat standard now with developers – over 19 million software developers are reported as of 2020 to utilize APIs.

So, what are the specific benefits of using APIs, and why are developers and businesses seeking more API solutions than ever before? Let’s take a look.

APIs are essentially carefully defined sets of rules that lay the groundwork that dictates how one app communicates with another. Take PayPal payments, for example. When businesses offer the functionality of paying with PayPal on their website or application, an API is at work when customers click to complete their transaction with PayPal. In this case, an API is connecting PayPal and the company’s app or website.

So, how do APIs work? The process takes place in 4 essential steps: 

1. First, the user initiates the API being used by initiating a “request” or retrieval of information.
2. The API then sends the request to the third-party application.
3. The third-party application provides the requested information to the API.
4. Finally, the API provides the requested information to the originally requesting server and to the user.

You might have already heard the term REST API; this refers to a certain architectural type of API. The architecture of an API is important because it determines what information is shared and how it is shared. There are several different API architecture types, but REST is the most popular for web developers building web APIs.

So, what is a REST API exactly?

REST stands for “representational state transfer,” which is a set of guidelines that dictate how user data is transferred. REST API guidelines and best practices generally include:

• All interactions must first be initiated by the client to the server and never initiated by the server
• HTTP should be used as the common language and requests should be made in GET, POST, PUT, or DELETE formats
• All REST API requests must be independent of each other and considered “stateless”
• Regardless of any added or changing layers, the way messages are sent between a server and client must remain unchanged
• REST APIs should always use data caching to promote time reduction

When these guidelines are followed, APIs are considered “RESTful.”

Other types of API architectural styles can include SOAP and RPC:

• Soap: SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. SOAP APIs utilize XML and often incorporate the use of much more code.
• RPC: RPC, or Remote Procedural Call, can use JSON or XML markup languages to enact server scripts. RPC, while easy to use, is more limited than SOAP and REST APIs and therefore not used as often.

eSignature APIs allow your business to seamlessly send documents for signature within your own application.

For example, let’s say you would like for all new employees in your business to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and your business has thousands of employees. 

You could try to email all of these employees, and then receive the Non-Disclosure Agreements back either in person or by email. The problem with this is that it involves a lot of manual work and extra resources, as your business will now have to come up with a strategy on how to handle these agreements.

To reduce costs and enhance your productivity, you can leverage an eSignature API that will manage sending these agreements as well as providing any extra features you may need throughout the signing process.

With Foxit eSign’s eSignature API, you are provided with a purpose built enterprise-ready solution that not only enhances your productivity and reduces costs. Our eSignature API also provides capabilities that meet your business needs, accessible right within the API, such as:

• Pre-filling any relevant information about the document when it is sent for signature.
• Downloading extensive Excel Reports with advanced filters. 
• Leveraging our Webhooks to automatically sync your customer data in your application with any relevant information in a signature.
• Downloading any signed document at any time
• Meet your compliance needs with our ESIGN, UETA, CCPA, eIDAS, GDPR, and 21 CFR Part 11 Compliant solution.