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Overview of REST APIs¶
Let us get an overview of REST APIs. REST based APIs are extensively used for building large scale applications.
- REST stands for Representational State Transfer.
- It is extensively used to build modern applications as it simplifies the process of building complex and large scale applications.
- Here are the use cases where REST APIs are extensively used.
- Mobile applications
- Web applications
- Data integration between multiple applications
- For mobile and web applications, we typically develop frontend and backend separately and integrate them over REST.
- Here are the commonly used REST based requests.
- GET – Get the data from the backend
- POST – Insert or update the data in the backend
- PUT – Update the data in the backend
- DELETE – Delete the data in the backend
- As part of data engineering projects, we typically use REST to get the data from external applications.
- If required, we can take care of authentication and authorization by leveraging Headers while placing the requests.
- Let us see an example using GitHub REST APIs. As a developer you might want to do the following:
- Get your repositories or public repositories. You can place GET request from external applications.
- Create a new repository under your GitHub Account. You can place POST request from external application.
- Delete an existing repository under your GitHub Account. You can place DELETE request form external application.
- Here are different ways you can validate REST APIs without getting into programming.
- Using browser (it might not work for complex requests)
- Using
curlcommand. - Using a client based utility called as postman.
In [1]:
!curl https://api.github.com
{
"current_user_url": "https://api.github.com/user",
"current_user_authorizations_html_url": "https://github.com/settings/connections/applications{/client_id}",
"authorizations_url": "https://api.github.com/authorizations",
"code_search_url": "https://api.github.com/search/code?q={query}{&page,per_page,sort,order}",
"commit_search_url": "https://api.github.com/search/commits?q={query}{&page,per_page,sort,order}",
"emails_url": "https://api.github.com/user/emails",
"emojis_url": "https://api.github.com/emojis",
"events_url": "https://api.github.com/events",
"feeds_url": "https://api.github.com/feeds",
"followers_url": "https://api.github.com/user/followers",
"following_url": "https://api.github.com/user/following{/target}",
"gists_url": "https://api.github.com/gists{/gist_id}",
"hub_url": "https://api.github.com/hub",
"issue_search_url": "https://api.github.com/search/issues?q={query}{&page,per_page,sort,order}",
"issues_url": "https://api.github.com/issues",
"keys_url": "https://api.github.com/user/keys",
"label_search_url": "https://api.github.com/search/labels?q={query}&repository_id={repository_id}{&page,per_page}",
"notifications_url": "https://api.github.com/notifications",
"organization_url": "https://api.github.com/orgs/{org}",
"organization_repositories_url": "https://api.github.com/orgs/{org}/repos{?type,page,per_page,sort}",
"organization_teams_url": "https://api.github.com/orgs/{org}/teams",
"public_gists_url": "https://api.github.com/gists/public",
"rate_limit_url": "https://api.github.com/rate_limit",
"repository_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}",
"repository_search_url": "https://api.github.com/search/repositories?q={query}{&page,per_page,sort,order}",
"current_user_repositories_url": "https://api.github.com/user/repos{?type,page,per_page,sort}",
"starred_url": "https://api.github.com/user/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
"starred_gists_url": "https://api.github.com/gists/starred",
"topic_search_url": "https://api.github.com/search/topics?q={query}{&page,per_page}",
"user_url": "https://api.github.com/users/{user}",
"user_organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/user/orgs",
"user_repositories_url": "https://api.github.com/users/{user}/repos{?type,page,per_page,sort}",
"user_search_url": "https://api.github.com/search/users?q={query}{&page,per_page,sort,order}"
}
]