Application programming interfaces, or APIs, provide a way for diverse computer programs and systems to reliably communicate with each other. Representative State Transfer (ReST) APIs are the most common type of API used for communication via hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) . Base SAS has robust tools baked in for working with ReST APIs. This paper includes a brief introduction to API concepts and demonstrates:
- Using PROC HTTP to submit API requests
- Using the JSON and XMLV2 LIBNAME engines to work with API response results
- Working with the World Bank API to obtain data in real-time
