How to Read and Understand API Documentation: A Simple Guide for Developers
Tutorials

How to Read and Understand API Documentation: A Simple Guide for Developers

Learn how to read and understand API documentation easily, with tips on endpoints, authentication, errors, plus a simple ApyHub API example.
How to Read and Understand API Documentation: A Simple Guide for Developers
NI
Nikolas Dimitroulakis
Last updated on November 20, 2025

How to Read and Understand API Documentation: A Simple Guide for Developers

Introduction

If you are a developer, product manager, or tester, you have probably faced the same challenge: how do I actually read and understand API documentation? It can feel like decoding a foreign language at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s an essential skill that opens up a world of integrations and automation.
In this post, I will share a simple, step-by-step approach to reading API docs, plus walk you through a real example using ApyHub’s Extract Links API so you see what the concepts look like in action.

Why Should You Learn to Read API Docs?

APIs let your app connect with other services like payment gateways, social media, or data scrapers. Good docs are your roadmap.
Without understanding them:
  • You might miss important details or features
  • Integrations can break or behave unexpectedly
  • Testing becomes guesswork
  • And the better you get at reading API docs, the faster you’ll build and ship new features.

Key Parts of API Documentation

Most API docs, including ApyHub’s, follow a similar pattern. Here’s what you should look out for:
1. Authentication
How do you prove you have permission to use the API? Usually with API keys or tokens. Docs tell you where and how to include these in your requests.
2. Endpoints & HTTP Methods
Where do you send your request? What HTTP method do you use?
GET: Retrieve data POST: Create or send data PUT/PATCH: Update data DELETE: Remove data
3. Request Format
What data do you send? Is it JSON? Form data? Are there required parameters?
4. Response Format
What data will you get back? Usually JSON — docs often provide example responses.
5. Response Codes & Errors
How do you know if your request worked? Status codes like 200 (success), 400 (bad request), or 401 (unauthorized) give you clues.
6. Examples & Tutorials
Good API docs provide sample code or curl commands — use these to get started quickly.

Step-by-Step: How to Read an API Doc (with ApyHub’s Extract Links API)

Step 1: Read the Overview
ApyHub’s Extract Links API helps you pull out all the URLs from any webpage. Simple, right? This gives you context before diving in.
Step 2: Understand Authentication
You’ll need an API token (your “password” to use the API). ApyHub expects you to add it as a header: apy-token: YOUR_API_KEY
Step 3: Look at the Endpoint & Method
The docs say: POST https://api.apyhub.com/extract/links/url
This means you send a POST request to that URL.
Step 4: Check the Request Body
You need to send JSON with one key: url — the webpage you want to extract links from. Example: { "url": "https://apyhub.com" }
Step 5: Review the Response
If everything works, you get back JSON with a list of links. Here’s a sample snippet:
{ "data": { "links": [ "https://apyhub.com/", "https://apyhub.com/catalog", "https://apyhub.com/pricing" ] } }
Step 6: Know the Common Response Codes
  • 200 means success
  • 400 means bad request (maybe you sent a bad URL)
  • 401 means you didn’t authenticate properly

Bonus Tips for Reading Any API Documentation

  • Don’t try to read everything at once. Focus on what you need first (like one endpoint).
  • Use example requests in Voiden to see the API in action. You can use any other tool as well.
  • Pay attention to authentication and error codes. They’ll save you tons of debugging time.
  • Bookmark or take notes on important details for later.
  • Look for client libraries if you want to speed up coding. ApyHub, for example, supports multiple languages with examples.
Check the changelog or version info to avoid surprises from breaking changes.

Final Thoughts

Reading API documentation isn’t rocket science, think about it more like learning a new recipe. Follow the steps, test as you go, and you’ll get faster and more confident each time.
Using ApyHub’s Extract Links API as a concrete example shows how docs typically structure info and what to pay attention to. But these principles apply across all APIs you’ll encounter.