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JavaScript

Khaled Pendleton
Khaled Pendleton
20,430 Points
Posted by Khaled Pendleton
Khaled Pendleton
20,430 Points

Is an api endpoint just a regular route?

I don't really see a difference between the "endpoint" made in this video and the routes made in the rest of the course EXCEPT for the type of data that is returned to the client. Is this all an endpoint is? Is it just a basic route that instead of returning HTML or Javascript it returns JSON?

1 Answer

gregsmith5
gregsmith5
32,615 Points

Is this all an endpoint is? Is it just a basic route that instead of returning HTML or Javascript it returns JSON?

Yeah, basically. The term 'endpoint' conceptually differentiates the route as something to be consumed programmatically by any client rather than just visited by a browser, but it's technically the same thing. Your API endpoint can actually return anything, including HTML (imagine being able to request parts of a webpage, like a button that some company wants styled in a particular way).