In this post to his site Mohamed Said shows you how to build an API that allows for easier integration with your content/functionality by 3rd party applications. This example uses the Laravel framework but the ideas could be applied in any framework.

APIs are cool, & laravel can handle all the coolness you may desire. Here we talk about building an API for third party applications and allowing them to communicate with your application on behalf of users.

He starts where any good project should: planning for what features need to be included and the flow of the request/response process. He then walks you through the whole process for setting up the API:

• Updating the routes for the API request endpoints
• Creating the new Auth and Home controllers
• Setting up the migration for the "applications" table
• Using the firebase/php-jwt library for authentication/authorization handling
• Registering a token and validating it on the incoming request

He wraps up the post talking about user authentication via a simplified OAuth-ish process flow, making requests using the resulting token and logging the user out (expiring the token).