application programming interface

noun

variants or less commonly application program interface

computing

: a set of rules that allows programmers to develop software for a particular operating system without having to be completely familiar with that operating system

To fix this problem, trustbusters have installed a provision forcing Microsoft to disclose more information about its so-called application programming interfaces, or APIs.

—Business Week

—abbreviation API

Examples of application programming interface in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Underpinning those models are application programming interfaces that developers use to build up and refine their own platforms to integrate services either with the likes of ChatGPT, or their own proprietary models. —Bloomberg News, TIME, 26 June 2024

Lee says the model’s application programming interface, or API, will cost $2.50 for 1 million input tokens and $12 for 1 million output tokens—about 1 million tokens lets a developer send roughly send 250 queries back and forth. —Saritha Rai, Fortune Asia, 13 May 2024

While full data standardization has not yet taken place, the proliferation of application programming interfaces (APIs) marks a significant leap forward in interoperability. —François Candelon, Fortune, 3 May 2024

Boston Dynamics is now announcing a new variant of Spot that includes a low-level application programming interface (API) that gives joint-level control of the robot. —IEEE Spectrum, 28 Mar. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1968, in the meaning defined above