Learn Python by Building Data Science Applications

Learning about web APIs

First, what is an API? Well, an Application Programming Interface (API) is an interface for working with a specific application programmatically—that is, via code. Think of Twitter bots or email clients—all of them use APIs to work with their corresponding applications (Twitter and email servers, respectively).

An API does not have to involve the web—many local applications on your computer have APIs of their own, so we can interact with them through Python or any other language. In our case, however, we need to work with a web API. Those APIs operate via HTTP requests and responses. Many contemporary APIs follow REST guidelines—a set of six design constraints that were put forward by Roy Fielding. You can learn more ...