Everybody's talking about it, nobody understands exactly. The (RESTful) API's are becoming more and more popular. Also PROAD has become part of the fan community and uses the interface from now on. You can find out what the professional character means and what advantages the new feature has for our users here in the article.

Many exciting new features have been added to PROAD in March: The digital filing in our cloud, a smart Facebook widget, the RESTful API interface and compatible with MacOS High Sierra is our agency software. Quite a lot of highlights, but one feature stands out from the crowd, because it's currently very trendy - the RESTful API v5. Sounds pretty intelligent. It is, too. But what exactly is behind the tongue twister?

REST-API Definition

For all users in this field: REST-API stands for "Representational State Transfer - Application Programming Interface".

The small everyday helpers have the sense and purpose to make an exchange of information possible on different systems. At times when everyone is on the move with their smartphone, tablet and laptop, the use of REST-APIs is indispensable. No wonder that many websites, including Google, Amazon and Twitter, already use REST APIs. In connection with HTTP, i.e. the set of rules of the Internet, one speaks of RESTful APIs. The name alone explains quite a lot. But interfaces like this can do even more.

World of interfaces: Everyday API's

Instead of API's one often speaks also of the machine-machine communication, since the different systems communicate with each other through the interfaces. This allows information, tasks, numbers and many other data sets to be shared - an increasing opening that interweaves systems and data into an even denser network.

If you take a closer look at the method, you will see that it is one of the most natural things in the world, because everything in our everyday lives consists of interfaces: The vacuum cleaner plug in the socket, the early morning coffee with milk, even right now, my rattling fingers on the keyboard. What also stands out in the same train of thought are the differences in the interfaces. This also applies to API's.

API designs and standards

A programming interface must be conceived and designed, which means that it is designed by people for people. As a developer you understand your field very well, but as a user the understanding of API design often goes beyond the basic skills. To solve this conflict different standards of API's like SOAP, SML or REST have been designed. They give a certain structure of the interfaces, whereby one can distinguish the interfaces better. Rightly noticed. We have been talking about the REST API the whole time. Why did we choose this interface? For a very simple reason: The standardization form REST is generally designed more simply and offers more design freedom. A feature that also suits our agency software.

Easy communication: RESTful API v5

Our new feature, the RESTful API v5, is a clever programming interface that makes it possible to link external applications with PROAD in an uncomplicated and standardized way. This means that from now on most of the data can be accessed read and write. This also applies to data used or modified in processes outside our agency software. Now you can simply save back all data of our features. PROAD has joined a huge network with the RESTful API, which makes it possible to communicate with the whole world.