Google, eBay, PayPal, Amazon, MapPoint, UPS, Fedex APIs
ISBN: 0764584456
Pages: 300
Publisher: Wrox
Topic: .NET
Rating: 
– (3 out of 5)
Professional Development with Web APIs discusses using other companies web services in your own programs. The VB .Net language is the main programming language used in this book, there are other examples using Microsoft Office VBA, but most are using VB .Net.
Web APIs are application programming interfaces that are available over the internet. They are also sometimes referred to as Web services. An example of a Web API is the Google API, which makes various search functions available over the internet for use in third party applications. In a generic sense a web service is merely a function or procedure that can be called over the internet.
Professional Development with Web APIs covers all the major APIs available on the internet including Google, PayPal, eBay, Amazon, MapPoint, UPS and Fedex APIs. The book covers a chapter on each with some good examples of how to interact with the APIs using VB .Net. Each chapter also gives you ideas of how to use the APIs in your own applications or on your own websites.
Professional Development with Web APIs also covers calling Web APIs from Mobile Devices and how to create your own API using .Net and how to call it. There is also a chapter on calling Web APIs from Microsoft Office using VBA. The book finishes off with a section on a real life example of a Customer Relationship Management Application. The application is a standard customer database type of application but it demonstrates the usefulness of APIs by displaying customer locations on a map by utilising the MapPoint API. The application also includes results from Google, and driving instructions on how to get to the customers site, something very useful for sales people.
All in all this is a very useful book if you want to learn about Web APIs and Webservices and be shown some good examples of how to include them in your own applications. All code examples are based on using VB .Net and VBA, so I would only recommend getting this book if you already program in VB .Net or want to use it as your chosen language to interact with webservices.