An API is a way to access the functionalities of a piece of code

without knowing the actual code.

It's basically a specification of how to instantiate classes,

call functions and use other elements of the code,
so the programmer knows how to use all those things without having to look at the
code.

In general APIs are used for many purposes,

such as instantiating and using a set of classes,
accessing the functionalities of a library and
making remote calls to a web server.