API usage is extremely common now. APIs are access points to an application that offer developers flexibility in the way they communicate with them, dramatically increasing their efficiency.
GCP offers full documentation on the APIs for their services. We recommend that you check out https://cloud.google.com/apis/ and click on the specific service you wish to read more about.
APIs use different authentication services, depending on where the API calls come from and the resource(s) they are requesting:
- API keys: These are encrypted strings that can be used when API calls don't need to access user data. These are great for getting developers up and running quickly. Keys are created from the GCP console under API | Services | Credentials. The key is then used in the API request.
- OAuth client IDs: These are based on the scope, meaning that different privileges will...
