What is an API?

Before we dive into the quickest ways to incorporate some of the most popular APIs, let's first define what an API is.

An API (application programming interface) is a set of protocols, tools, and subroutine definitions for building applications and software.

The basic purpose of an API is to perform complex functions at a quarter of the time and effort typically needed.

Here's a real-life example, consider the electricity supplied to your apartment, house, or other dwellings.

To use electric appliances, all you need to do is plug it into a socket, and BAM! It starts working.

You don’t need to wire the appliance directly into the power supply, you just need to interact with the outlet to immediately get the electricity.

The outlet in the above example, is the API, it allows us to save tremendous time and needless complication, by offering an interface to interact with, and thereby simplifies the retrieval of desired results.

Stripe payment processor API:

Stripe is one of the most widely used online payment processors for debit and credit cards.

It serves as a payment processor enabling your application to make financial transactions.

The general steps involved in integrating Stripe's API within your HTML payment form are as follows:

1. Get your Stripe API keys after stripe account creation. These payment keys are used when executing the above mention API queries (as a way to interact with your specific account).
2. Create an HTML payment form, this form is used to collect all the user information.
3. Use JavaScript for client-side card authentication and as a response handler. These are used for getting the unique token and authentication from the server.
4. Utilize PHP for calculating processing charges.
5. Store the payment in your database, and display the results appropriately.
6. You will also be able to see successful transactions reflected on your Stripe account dashboard.

Using Twitter API with PHP:

Twitter API is a very useful interface, that allows you to perform all desired Twitter operations smoothly from your website or web app.

The basic steps to integrate Twitter's API with your application are as follows:

1. Get your Twitter API key by registering your app or website.
2. Utilize RapidAPI to connect with the Twitter API.
3. Select PHP form from the drop-down list available at RapidAPI, as the endpoint.
4. Test the API functionality via PHP code, by performing basic Twitter operations.

Slack API integration steps:

The basic steps involved in integrating Slack API with your application are as follows:

1. Login to slack and register a Slack application. To register a Slack application you need to enter your web application info.
2. Once the application is registered and you get your API credentials, enter these credentials into your application.
3. The best practice is to create a data structure where you can store the authorization information.
4. THis data structure would allow you to perform authorization checks, and the "Add to Slack" button on your website.
5. The "Add to Slack" button will lead you to Slack's authorization page, where you can enter your credentials, and click the authentication button if everything looks good.