Application Programming Interface (API)

An application programming interface (API) is a set of rules and protocols that lets different software systems communicate with each other. In machine learning, APIs allow applications to send data to a model and receive predictions back without needing to understand the model's internal workings. A REST API, for example, accepts an image over HTTP and returns detection results as JSON.

Most computer vision platforms expose their functionality through APIs. You can upload training data, start model training, check training progress, and run inference on new images all through API calls. This makes it possible to integrate vision capabilities into existing software systems, mobile apps, web applications, and industrial automation workflows without building the ML infrastructure from scratch.

Datature provides REST APIs that let users programmatically manage projects, upload assets, trigger training runs, and deploy models for inference. This enables teams to build automated pipelines where new images flow in, get processed by trained models, and produce structured outputs, all without manual intervention through the web interface.