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What is a REST API, and why might you want to use one?
To be successful in this course, you’ll need to be familiar with the basics of building a server side Express application. Check out the Express Basics course.
If you’re unfamiliar with how call callbacks, promises and async/await are used in Express, check out the Asynchronous Code in Express course
Asynchronous JavaScript Resources:
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[MUSIC]
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>> Hey, I'm Treasure, a JavaScript developer and teacher here at Treehouse.
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In this course, we'll be using the popular Node.js platform and
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Express framework to build a type of web application called a REST API.
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To define a REST API, we first need to talk about a traditional web application.
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Traditional web applications handle both serverside and clientside concerns.
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Say you build a web application to keep a record of your favorite recipes.
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To view a certain recipe, you'd click on that recipe's URL, and
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your browser would request that recipe from a server.
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A traditional server side application would respond to that request by finding
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the RESP data in a database, assembling that data into HTML templates and
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sending that HTML back to the browser to be displayed.
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Seems reasonable but what if you wanted to use that same RESP information to build
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a mobile app or an entirely different application?
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That's where REST API comes in, when you request a specific recipe in a RESTful
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application, the application responds only with the recipe data,
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typically in the form of JSON.
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Sending JSON data rather than HTML means the back end only has to be built once.
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While any number of front end applications can consume and display the data.
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When designing an application this way,
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you can manipulate the same data in endless ways.
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If I have a REST API for recipes, for example, I could create a recipe website.
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But I could also use the same data to create a meal planning app,
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a calorie tracking app, a virtual cookbook, and on, and on.
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As another good example, think about the Twitter app on your phone.
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The phone app makes a request to Twitter RESP API,
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to get the tweets before you see them.
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The JSON from Twitter's API is then formatted and displayed on your phone.
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But the Twitter API allows the same tweet data to be accessed and
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used by a web browser, a smart TV, or a home IoT device.
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REST APIs can provide data and content for rich web applications, mobile apps,
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and other serverside applications,
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even those applications written in other programming languages.
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Basically, a REST API lets you retrieve data and
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present that data in any way you want, providing amazing flexibility.
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I'll review some key concepts in this course, but to be successful,
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you should be familiar with the basics of node,
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building a serverside application with Express, and Express middleware.
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You should also be familiar with asynchronous JavaScript,
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specifically using Callbacks, Promises, and Async Await.
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See the teacher's notes below for the prerequisite courses.
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In this course, we'll use Node and
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Express to build out a simple API that provides data about famous quotes.
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When we're finished, users will be able to request famous quotes from our API,
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as well as add new quotes, edit and delete existing quotes, and
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request a random quote.
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As we build this project, you'll learn more about how API's work and
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specifically, how to build one with Express.
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Let's dig a bit more into the structure of an API.
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