Working With APIs
Learning Outcomes
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What’s Included
Why Work with APIs
Why Work with APIs
Integrating APIs can bring huge productivity and efficiency benefits. In this first lesson, we explore these benefits at a high level. We'll also introduce our sample API endpoint, The Kubicle BizDeck. Finally, we'll outline the main topics we'll be covering throughout this course.
How APIs Work
How APIs Work
The RESTful approach has come to dominate the API economy. In this lesson, we'll examine the core components of a RESTful integration, including endpoints, parameters, methods, requests and responses. We'll take a look at a real API in action, before introducing some of the tools used to interact with APIs.
Experimenting with cURL
Experimenting with cURL
Now that we know the basic building blocks of an API integration, we can start experimenting with an endpoint. In this course, we'll use the command line tool cURL to make simple GET requests of our sample endpoint. We'll refine our results using parameters and explore how pagination works.
Experimenting with Postman
Experimenting with Postman
cURL, while effective, does not have the most accessible interface. In this lesson, we'll explore Postman, a simple and user-friendly client that allows us to build and test API endpoints. We'll also familiarize ourselves with some of the popular online storefronts for accessing APIs.
Working with API keys
Working with API keys
When working with private or sensitive data, the need for security and authentication protocols is greatly increased. In this lesson, we'll explore some of the methods by which API providers can limit and control access to their endpoints. Through a practical example, we'll experiment by sending an API request using an API key.
HTTP Requests
HTTP Requests
We know that API endpoints point to a specific location at the server end. The action taken at this location will depend on the HTTP request method. In this lesson, we'll begin at a high level, exploring CRUD functions, before moving on to the main types of HTTP request. We'll also examine a standard API request body.
Making sense of API Responses
Making sense of API Responses
A standard API response will consist of a status code, a header and a body. In this lesson, we will explore each of these components, familiarizing ourselves with the five categories of HTTP status codes. We'll unpack the contents of a head and a response body, before finally exploring the two dominant API response formats, JSON and XML.
Technical Components of an API
Technical Components of an API
By now, we've explored how APIs work. In this lesson, we can delve into some of the more technical components of APIs. We'll explore what we mean when we talk about layered architecture, and how RESTful principles ensure these layers remain separated. We'll cover the concept of webhooks. We'll also learn about some additional authorization protocols like OAuth.
Extracting JSON Data from Postman
Extracting JSON Data from Postman
Having covered many of the technical components of APIs, it's time to put some of this knowledge to practical use. In this lesson, we'll first learn how to extract a JSON file directly from Postman. We'll then explore how we can open and modify this file using Microsoft Excel.
Performing a Data Transfer in Excel
Performing a Data Transfer in Excel
We know how to extract a static file using Postman. In this lesson, we'll learn how to plug an API endpoint directly into our workflow. Using a new sample endpoint, The Kubicle Stock Index, we'll explore the options in Excel for extracting data directly from a URL.
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