API for beginners

Application Programming Interface

Defining Interfaces

• GUI : Graphical UserInterface

REST api

• To be RESTFULL
  • Client-Server Archtecture
  • Statelessness
  • Cacheability
  • Layered System
  • Code on Demand
  • Uniform Interface

Unit 1 - What is an API

In this unit we'll define what an API, or Application Programming Interface, is and why you should use them.

Video 1 - Welcome

👋 Hello and welcome to the course and your notes! Make sure you check this area out often!

Beginner content

• freeCodeCamp.org is a great place to get started and I recommend jumping right in.
• 🍿freeCodeCamp on YouTube provides a wonderful collection of beginning programming courses. I recommend the 🎥 JavaScript tutorial.

Designing API Content

• 📚 REST API Design Best Practices - freeCodeCamp
• 🍿 What exactly is an API - ProgrammableWeb 101
• 📚 API Guide - moesif

Video 2 - Defining Interface

Learn more

Media Player APIs

Don't worry about understanding these, however, appreciate their complexity

• Android MediaPlayer API documentation
• iOS Media Player API documentation
• Web Audio API

Video 3 - Defining API

Learn more

• 📚 Web APIs - MDN
• 📰 Google vs. Oracle on the rights to the Java API - The Verge

Video 4 - Remote APIs

The path to remote APIs

• SOAP - Wikipedia
• Remote Procedure Call (RPC) - Wikipedia
• SOAP and REST at Odds
• SOAP vs. REST
• REST vs. RPC

Video 5 - How the web works

• HTTP - Wikipedia
• 📚 How the Web Works - MDN

Video 6 - RESTful API Constraint Scavenger Hunt

• Representational State Transfer - Wikipedia

Unit 2 - Exploring APIs

In this unit, we'll do some hands-on exploring of a couple of popular APIs.

Video 1 - Exploring an API online

• Spotify for Developers
• 🔎Spotify Console
• 🦞Beyonce's Spotify Page
• Beyonce's Spotify ID: 6vWDO969PvNqNYHIOW5v0m

Explore

• ProgrammableWeb provides a categorized directory of APIs.
• API List provides categories and a powerful search feature.

Video 2 - Using an API from the command line

• 🍿 What is the terminal and why should I use it? - Developer Fundamentals - YouTube

Installing cURL

Mac OS

Using Homebrew

brew install curl

Download

⬇️ Download cURL for MacOSX

Windows

⬇️ Download cURL for Windows

NOTE: If you are running PowerShell, delete the curl alias for Invoke-WebRequest by adding the following command to your profile (C:\Users\<username>\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1):

Remove-Item alias:curl

Learn More

• 📚 Command Line for Beginners – How to Use the Terminal Like a Pro - freeCodeCamp
• Check out the jq tutorial for parsing JSON on the command line
• cURL manpage
• POST (HTTP) - Wikipedia (For info on form-urlencoded search for "Use for submitting web forms")

Video 3 - You Go Curl

• 🙌 Twilio - Signup
• Twilio Console
• 📚 Create a Message - Twilio Docs

The Twilio Messages API URL is:

https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/<Your Account SID Here>/Messages.json

Make sure to replace that SID with your Account SID which can be found in the Twilio console

Video 4 - Using Tools to Explore APIs

• 💡 Govee Aura Smart Table Lamp
• ⬇️ RestFox (REST API Client)

Video 5 - More tools for your API Exploring Toolbox

• ⬇️ Visual Studio Code (code editor)
• ⬇️ Thunder Client for VS Code
• 🎓🆓 Postman Student Expert Certification Program
• 🍿 Postman Webinars
• ⬇️ Many wonderful API Collections can be downloaded for exploration in the Postman API Network

Learn More

• Boilerplate code - Wikipedia

Video 6 - Using Helper Libraries

• 🍿 What is the file system and why should I learn about it? - Developer Fundamentals - YouTube
• Command Line Interface - VSCode
• ⬇️ Install Node.js (JavaScript runtime)
• 📚 Promise - mdn
• 📚 Async / Await - mdn
• 🍿 What is my System Path? - Developer Fundamentals - YouTube

To use the Twilio Node Helper Library

npm install twilio

Windows Make a directory named scratch

mkdir scratch

Unit 3 - Using APIs

In this unit, we'll build a single page application that makes use of a client side framework and it's APIs. We'll create a server side API to feed our application, and reshape data from a public Web API. That's a lot of APIs!

Video 1 - Introducing the project

• 🍿 What do tutorials mean when they say my shell? - Developer Fundamentals - YouTube
• 👩‍💻 The code (index.html)
• Vue.js - Front-end JavaScript Framework
• Vue SilentBox Plugin

Windows To open an HTML file in your default browser from the command line:

start .\index.html

Video 2 - Serverless

• 👩‍💻 The code (/incoming-message)
• Serverless Computing - Wikipedia
• Serverless on Twilio
• 🍿 Understanding Webhooks - freeCodeCamp - YouTube

Video 3 - Writing a Server Side API

• 👩‍💻 The code (/api/pics)
• 🤷 Example NSFW Detection API
• Everything You Need To Know About API Rate Limiting - Nordic APIs

Video 4 - Fetching Results on the Client from our Server

• 👩‍💻 The updated code (index.html)
• 📚 fetch API - mdn
• 🏅 REST Architectural Constraints - Scavenger Hunt PRIZE!
• 🍿 Learn Twilio Messaging, Voice, and Serverless (Full Course!)

Video 5 - Wrap Up

I built a little Twilio application using Studio and some APIs to gather your feedback.

Please text FEEDBACK to me at (432) 527-4274 and let me know what you thought about this course! (You can also call if that's your jam)

👋 Thanks for hanging out! 🙏 Keep me updated on your journey 💪🚀!

@craigsdennis

PS. If you want to keep on learning for free, I can't recommend the video game TwilioQuest 🎮 enough.

taken from [Link](https://github.com/TwilioDevEd/> introduction-to-apis-notes)