Hello everyone,
I didn't know where to post this, so if it needs to be moved, feel free to do so. My question is this: On any platform, what are API's? What are they used for, and what do they stand for? I have seen articles describing the process of creating system wide API hooks on a XP machine, but why would someone want to do this, and what would it accomplish? If you find any other articles which describe some of this stuff, feel free to post it here.
Thanks
API stands for Application Program Interface. When a developer creates a piece of software/operating system and they want extrenal companies or developers to be able to make modifications, plugins, or additions to the existing software or data they release a detailed set of isntructions that is known as an API.
This API describes in detail the methods that a developer can interact with the internal structure,functions, or data of the program so that they can either modify or add to the original behaviour of the program or data.
A simplified example is the heavily used Windows Sockets (Winsock) API which is the method that Window uses the IP protocol to transfer information. In order for other developers to make applications that used Windows Sockets to communicate over the Internet, the Windows Socket API was released. This gave third-party developers the information they needed to access the winsock functions in order for their programs to be able to work with both windows and the Internet.
I hope this was not too confusing
