Chapter 14. Web APIs
Eventually, you might want to expand your application beyond your website. Popular web applications usually also have a native mobile client and sometimes even a desktop client. You may also want to integrate data from your application with other websites and applications.
A web application programming interface (or API) makes all of these things possible. Think of an API as a language that applications use to communicate with each other. On the Web, the API is usually a REST protocol using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) messages.
In this chapter, we’ll explore the GitHub API to see how to access detailed information about users and repositories. After discussing GitHub’s API, you’ll build your own. In the process, I’ll cover ...
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