1. Introduction to API's | Full tutorial for beginners | Learn API concepts |

Summary

This video explores the exciting world of APIs, emphasizing their role in connecting applications and enhancing possibilities for developers. It covers the basics of APIs, their broad applications in various services like Facebook, Twitter, and Google Maps, and introduces the concept of web APIs. The speaker also highlights the potential of combining APIs for innovative projects and mentions the Internet of Things, showcasing how physical objects can be controlled via APIs.

Takeaways

• 😀 APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are essential tools that allow different applications to communicate and share data.
• 🌟 The speaker's enthusiasm for teaching about APIs stems from their ability to open up endless possibilities for building applications that leverage existing data and services.
• 🔌 APIs enable developers to 'stand on the shoulders of giants' by using existing services and data instead of creating everything from scratch.
• 📍 Examples of APIs include those for maps, weather data, and social media platforms like Facebook, which can be used to enhance applications without the need for extensive groundwork.
• 🔑 The term 'API' can refer to any interface that allows code to interact with other code, including web-based APIs and those for databases, hardware, or software libraries.
• 📚 The textbook definition of an API includes a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software and applications, highlighting its broad applicability.
• 🌐 Web APIs specifically are interfaces that allow applications to communicate over the internet, often using HTTP requests to retrieve data in a structured format like JSON.
• 🔍 Popular web APIs mentioned include those from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Google Places, and Yelp, each serving different purposes and providing access to unique datasets.
• 🛠 'If This Then That' (IFTTT) is a service that allows users to connect different APIs in a visual interface to automate tasks and create custom interactions between services.
• 🚗 The Internet of Things (IoT) introduces APIs for physical objects, such as smart light bulbs or Tesla cars, enabling them to be controlled and interacted with via code.
• 🗺 Programmable Web is a directory that lists thousands of APIs, serving as a valuable resource for developers looking for specific data sources or services to integrate into their applications.

Q & A

What is an API?

An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software and applications. It allows different software programs to communicate with each other.

Why are APIs exciting to learn about?

APIs are exciting because they open up possibilities for building applications by utilizing data and services from other applications, allowing developers to create complex systems without having to develop everything from scratch.

Can you give an example of how an API is used in a real-world application?

A common example is the use of the Facebook API by the Tinder app. Tinder uses the Facebook API to fetch user data like profile pictures, likes, and mutual friends to enhance the dating experience by matching users with similar interests.

What does the term 'web API' specifically refer to?

A web API is a subset of APIs that facilitate interaction with web-based systems over the internet. It allows applications to send and receive data from web services using standard protocols like HTTP.

What format is commonly used for data exchange in web APIs?

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a common format used for data exchange in web APIs because it is lightweight and easy for both humans and machines to read and write.

What is the purpose of the website 'Programmable Web' mentioned in the script?

'Programmable Web' is a directory that lists and categorizes APIs. It provides information on various APIs available for different services, helping developers find and integrate the APIs they need.

What is 'If This Then That' (IFTTT) and how does it relate to APIs?

IFTTT is a service that allows users to create chains of simple conditional statements, called 'recipes,' to automate actions between different apps and devices. It relies on APIs to connect and control these services and devices.

Can APIs be used to interact with physical devices? Provide an example.

Yes, APIs can interact with physical devices, often referred to as the 'Internet of Things.' An example is the Tesla API, which allows users to control various aspects of their Tesla cars, such as checking battery status, setting climate control, or even honking the horn.

What are some of the applications or data that can be accessed through APIs mentioned in the script?

Examples include Facebook profile data, Twitter tweets, weather data, Reddit posts, Google Maps locations, and Yelp restaurant information. These APIs allow developers to integrate various functionalities into their applications.

Why is understanding APIs beneficial for developers?

Understanding APIs is beneficial for developers because it enables them to leverage existing services and data, speeding up development time and enhancing the functionality of their applications by integrating diverse data sources and capabilities.

Outlines

00:00

🎓 Introduction to APIs and Their Importance

The speaker introduces APIs, emphasizing their potential to expand what can be built by using data from other applications. APIs allow developers to leverage existing data and services, making it easier to create powerful applications without starting from scratch. The concept of APIs is explained, highlighting that they enable communication between programs and services.

05:00

🌐 Understanding Web APIs

The focus shifts to web APIs, which allow applications to communicate over the internet. Examples such as Facebook's API, which Tinder uses to access user data, illustrate how APIs function. The speaker explains the difference between human interfaces (e.g., HTML) and programmatic interfaces (e.g., JSON), which are used by applications to exchange data efficiently.

10:01

🔗 Examples of Popular APIs

The speaker provides examples of popular APIs, including those from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Google Maps, and Yelp. The utility of combining multiple APIs to create more advanced applications is highlighted. The website IFTTT.com (If This Then That) is introduced as a tool to connect different APIs for various automation tasks.

15:02

🚀 Exploring API Directories and Specific Use Cases

The speaker discusses programmableweb.com, a directory of over 15,000 APIs, showcasing the wide range of available APIs for different purposes. The Tesla API is mentioned as an example of an Internet of Things (IoT) API, allowing users to control various functions of their Tesla vehicles programmatically. This demonstrates the practical applications and innovative possibilities of APIs.

📚 Summary and Importance of APIs

The video concludes by summarizing the key points about APIs, defining them as tools that allow code to interact with other code or services. While most people refer to web APIs when talking about APIs, the term encompasses a wide range of interfaces used in various applications and services. The speaker underscores the significance of APIs in modern software development.

Keywords

💡APIs

APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. They allow different software systems to communicate with each other. In the video, APIs are highlighted as a key to creating innovative applications by leveraging data from other services, such as social media platforms or weather services, without having to develop everything from scratch.

💡Web API

A Web API is a type of API that is accessed over the internet. It is a more specific subset of APIs that allows for communication between web-based applications. The video discusses how web APIs are used to request data from services like Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter, which is then integrated into other applications to provide additional functionality.

💡JSON

JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight data-interchange format that is easy for humans to read and write and for machines to parse and generate. In the context of the video, JSON is mentioned as the format in which data is often returned by web APIs, making it a crucial component for developers when consuming API responses.

💡IFTTT

IFTTT, which stands for 'If This Then That', is a service that allows users to create chains of simple conditional statements, called 'applets', which are triggered based on changes to other web services. The video uses IFTTT as an example of how APIs can be connected to automate tasks across different services.

💡Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things refers to the network of physical devices, vehicles, and other items embedded with sensors, software, and connectivity that enables these objects to collect and exchange data. The video mentions IoT in the context of APIs controlling physical objects like smart light bulbs or Tesla cars, showcasing the broad application of APIs.

💡Data Interchange

Data interchange is the process of sharing data between different systems. APIs facilitate data interchange by providing a standardized way for applications to request and receive information. The video emphasizes the importance of APIs in enabling data interchange for creating rich, data-driven applications.

💡HTTP Requests

HTTP, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol, is the primary protocol used for communication on the World Wide Web. In the video, HTTP requests are mentioned as the means by which web APIs are accessed, allowing developers to retrieve data from remote servers.

💡Facebook API

The Facebook API allows developers to access and utilize Facebook's data and functionalities within their own applications. The video uses the Facebook API as an example to illustrate how an application like Tinder can access common interests and mutual friends data to enhance its service.

💡ProgrammableWeb

ProgrammableWeb is an online directory that provides information about various APIs. It serves as a valuable resource for developers looking to find and understand different APIs for their projects. The video mentions ProgrammableWeb as a place to discover and explore a wide range of APIs.

💡Endpoints

In the context of APIs, an endpoint refers to a specific URL that is used to request a particular resource or service. The video explains that endpoints are part of API documentation, which provides information on how to interact with the API and what data to expect in response.

💡Tinder

Tinder is a dating application that uses the Facebook API to access user data, such as profile pictures and interests, to facilitate the matching process. The video uses Tinder as an example of an application that relies on an API to function effectively and provide a personalized user experience.

Highlights

APIs open up possibilities for building applications by using data from other applications.

API stands for Application Programming Interface, which is a way for programs to communicate.

Tinder uses Facebook's API to show common likes and mutual friends.

APIs can be used for various purposes like accessing weather data, maps, and social media feeds.

IFTTT (If This Then That) connects different APIs to automate tasks.

Programmable Web is a directory with over 15,000 APIs for various uses.

APIs can be used for controlling physical objects like thermostats and light bulbs through the Internet of Things.

Tesla has an unofficial API that allows interaction with their electric cars, such as checking battery charge and controlling climate settings.

APIs can be used to automate social media posts across multiple platforms using IFTTT.

Web APIs are a subset of APIs that specifically deal with web interfaces and HTTP requests.

JSON is a data format that is easier for computers to use, commonly used in web APIs.

APIs can be used to create applications that display live data, such as a chart updating with the number of dog and cat mentions on Reddit.

APIs can be used to access and manipulate data from databases, video cards, and hard drives.

APIs can be used to create applications that interact with social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

APIs can be used to access and utilize data from services like Google Places and Yelp for location-based applications.

APIs can be used to create applications that automate tasks based on certain triggers, such as turning off Wi-Fi when leaving a specific location.

Programmable Web is a great resource for finding APIs for specific projects or for inspiration.

Transcripts

all right welcome back so this topic

this section that we're going to talk

about is one of my favorite things to

teach it's really really fun for me and

I know I say that a few times in this

course but this is by far the actual

favorite topic of mine and it's really

exciting to learn in my opinion we're

going to talk about api's and the reason

that it's exciting to learn is that it

really opens up the possibilities for

what you can build you can make all

sorts of amazing applications that use

data from other applications or that

rely on other applications to basically

you know you can stand on the shoulders

of giants and and make some really

awesome things without having to do a

ton of work and do everything yourself

from scratch so the subtitle is

connecting with other apps and that's

really the gist of all of this is what

if we want to display a map or I want to

get latitude longitude data or I want to

get weather data you don't need to go

put out weather sensors and connect them

to the Internet and then get that data

someone else has done that and made it

all nice and easy for you to understand

and interact with and then you just

write code that uses that API so without

getting too far ahead of ourselves

API stands for application programming

interface although it's actually

application program interface

some people say programming it doesn't

matter but the idea is that it's an

interface for programs for code or

computers to talk to one another so I

can write code like this code it's very

small but this code right here is

interacting with Facebook so Facebook

has an API that allows me to get data

from Facebook so we have it you know

human interface when I go on Facebook

myself and hopefully I don't spend too

much time there but when I do that I'm

looking at the human interface the HTML

usually that I see it's rendered to me

nicely they got photos and colors and

text and fonts and all that stuff

when I want to make an app though that

uses Facebook data so a popular example

would be something like tinder if you're

not familiar with tinder

you're probably lying but if you're

actually not familiar with

it's a dating ish application that you

go on you sign up with your Facebook

account and it shows you people's photos

you can kind of say yes or no swipe left

or right but most importantly to what

I'm talking about here is that it shows

you if you have any likes in common with

them so if you have any favorite movies

that you've added to both of your

Facebook profiles or books or I think

music as well and a few other things and

it also will tell you how many friends

you have in common

based off of Facebook so that data is

not just coming from the regular

Facebook website like if I went on

Facebook I could find that out if I

matched with someone I could go on their

Facebook page if it's public at least

and I could manually compare do we like

the same movies but of course that's not

happening behind the scenes and tinder

source code there is code that's

connecting to Facebook's API and saying

hey these two people well it's probably

more like hey this person that called

has matched with let's get their data

and save it to our database and then

let's take colds data that we already

have in our database and compare them

but the idea is we're talking or tinder

is talking to Facebook and that's one

example but api's are literally

everywhere nowadays pretty much every

application you use so the term API is

actually a broader term that refers to

any type of code any interface that is

made for other code to communicate with

so if we go on Wikipedia actually the

definition the textbook definition I

guess is in computer programming an

application programming interface of so

if they use programming that program is

a set of routines protocols and tools

for building software and applications

so that's very broad and that is

basically saying it's any set of tools

code

routines that you can use in an

application so it could be a database

API so that has nothing to do with the

internet it's just how you connect to a

database locally on your computer it

could be a video card API or a hard

drive a hard disk drive API

so those are kind of other non web-based

examples or when I was learning Java in

high school I used an API to to

incorporate like graphical elements

buttons and windows and stuff into my

applications really ugly mario clone

that i made and like solitaire i used an

api for that so that is a different kind

of context typically what people mean

when they refer to an api today is a web

api which has its own section here but

that is a subset of api's in general so

api is in general any code whether it's

a library a package a module a web api

some sort of interface to work with

image analysis on your computer or a

database they're all over the place

so many different things that they do

you can use them in your own code web

api s are more specialized they have to

do with web interfaces to other code or

to other applications so for instance

the Facebook API we talked about the way

that an application gets that data is

through the web through the internet I

am requesting that data from Facebook so

just like when I request a web page

let's say reddit.com slash are slash aw

which is cute photos they're cute images

of dogs and cats usually with the

occasional reptile lover slash weirdo no

offense to anyone who has reptiles

I just can't can't get behind that so

when I request this hit enter you know

I'm seeing the human version the

interface for me and for all of us but

there's also an interface for codes to

interact with there's a web api where we

request it and rather than seeing this

our computer sees this so I'll talk

about what this is it's something called

JSON and just a one video from now but

it's basically another format of data

that is better easier for computers to

use it doesn't have any of the fluff

that we have here because if I'm writing

an app let's say I want to pit dogs

versus cats and I want to count the

number of posts every day that mentioned

dogs and the number of posts every day

that mention cat

and have a chart so you can visit my

website and there's a live chart that's

updating what I would need to do is get

that from reddit I would need to ask

reddit you know give me the data today

or every hour that updated give me the

current front page of our /oo and then I

would go through the data this data here

and calculate you know search for dog

search for cat and tally it up and

update my graph every hour so that's a

simple example you can do much more

complex things of course so here are

some other examples of api's twitter you

can do things like give me all the

tweets that mention ice cream or you

know unlike CNN there's always like live

tweets coming in that mentioned certain

hashtags or certain news events Facebook

as we talked about so many things you

can get from Facebook's API profile

pictures likes and that and you probably

see it all the time in applications

where you see that kind of warning or

question that pops up from Facebook it's

like this application wants to use your

data do you accept it or not or do you

permit it or not and you can kind of

change things who can see what and what

data it can access whether API so

there's lots of weather API is out there

they do different things reddit API kind

of what we just saw very briefly Google

Places what gas stations are near

someone Google Maps of course to get a

map going the Yelp API you can do things

like give me ten restaurants in not the

zip code 94110 lots and lots of things

you can do and then of course by

combining them together you can do even

cooler things which is actually this

site ifttt.com if this then that is a

way to connect api's so there are three

hundred and nine services and basically

this is it's kind of confusing I guess

but it's a way to have a visual

interface to connect api's to do things

for you so I picked up photography on

the side and there's so many photography

sites if you want to do the whole social

media thing and there's Flickr and

Instagram Facebook 500 pixels Dropbox

and I want an iCloud and let's say I

want all of those anytime I post a photo

to Instagram I want it to post to all of

those other places you can do that

using if this then that so these are all

the services they they allow they work

with so Facebook's API Twitter's API

github x' there are something there's

something called the Internet of Things

so ap is that will exist for physical

objects like a thermostat where you can

control the temperature through an API

or a video camera security camera where

you can use code to turn it on and off

or rotate it or a light bulb that you

can change the hue the color of

dynamically using code so you know in

college had friends who would take light

bulbs that were smart electronic ones

connected to the internet plug them into

their dorm and then it would

automatically take whatever music was

playing they wrote some code that would

then kind of turn the lights on and off

and change the color to make a little

visualizer for the music so there's tons

of thing of things on here this is just

a side thing that's cool for you to

check out if this than that if you're

not familiar with it you can look at

browse recipes so these are some of the

popular things people will do like

remind yourself to put on sunscreen when

the UV index is high so it will

automatically connect to an API that

figures out what the UV index is and

then it will write some code that you

know whatever I don't know what the UV

index how that works what the scale is

but whenever it reaches a certain number

then it will send you an alert receive a

notification to turn off Wi-Fi and save

battery powder when you leave a specific

location so you can do all sorts of

things connect you know if this then do

that all right so that all relies on the

API is and they support 300-plus api's

but there are way more api's out there

and a great place to see that is a tool

or a site called programmable web and

it's an API directories how they build

themselves

have 15,000 api's there are more out

there but this is a great place to start

so if I know I want to use

transportation data let's say I want to

make an app that will tell you when the

next train is in San Francisco using

your current location or will tell you

what the latest train you can take to

still make it to work before your first

meeting is something like that I would

need an API to figure out when the

trains are so I could click on

transportation here I could do a search

and there's all these different API so

there's a yahoo traffic there's a bus

lufthansa for narrow lines there's

Indian Railways so this is kind of all

over the place you could narrow it down

of course or you could look for weather

if I needed weather data and there's all

these api's you can click on one like

let's go I don't want those interesting

climbing weather provides weather data

for climbing sites and then I can see

the URL for their home page sometimes

their sample code not always in this

case there isn't I can see the sites

they support the climbing sites and then

I can also see an endpoint that will

show you basically this is the site

where you can go learn about how the API

works so we're gonna see this in just a

moment with one the API is we

incorporate but this will tell you the

documentation what the data looks like

that you'll get back where you're

supposed to make a request to to find

certain data so that's all I want to

show though mainly programmable web so

the directory for lots of api's some

amazing things on here some sort of

obscure things api is to detect nudity

and images and then more common things

like you know restaurants and bars and

location guides national park data

linkedin data maps Facebook you know

lots and lots of things on here so great

resource also fun just to browse some

things that they have on here if you

ever you know a lot of times I would get

student's a project and and some people

know immediately they want to use a

certain API and then some people weren't

inspired and they needed help they

wanted inspiration and they just go

browse until they find an API that

excites them often on programmable web

ok so one last thing here that I just

think is cool is that Tesla Tesla cars

or motor cars the electric car maker has

an API

I think it's unofficial that they don't

support it necessarily but there's an

API that you can use to interact with

their cars so you can view the

documentation here of things you can do

you can query a car for how charged it

is what percent of the of the battery is

charged how much the estimated range and

this is what you get back so when you

make a request to this URL and you have

to put in your vehicle ID and I don't

have a Tesla so I won't do that but if

you did you could put it in there and

plug it in the red and it would give you

this information but you can also do

things like ask for the current climate

settings temperature inside temperature

outside and then you can do really fun

things like wake the car up or open the

charging port on the on the side start

the charging stop charging flash the

lights honk the horn so you can write

code that will there's videos of people

who do this they'll have when their

alarm goes off in the morning code will

automatically check the weather outside

and then appropriately set the Tesla

well turn the Tesla on first set its

temperature inside to an appropriate

temperature depending on how hot or cold

it is outside then it will honk the horn

and start some music that will you know

wake up music or something and there's

videos to this online and you can do

that because of the API so that's an

example of you know the Internet of

Things where there's a physical object a

thing that is being controlled through

an API ok so we covered a lot there to

sum up api's application programming

interface ways for you to write code

that interacts with other code other

pieces of data application services

typically web api is what most people

refer to which are api's that are

structured in a way that you interact

with them through the web usually

through HTTP requests