Intro to REST APIs

[MUSIC] 0:00 >> Hey, I'm Treasure, a JavaScript developer and teacher here at Treehouse. 0:08 In this course, we'll be using the popular Node.js platform and 0:12 Express framework to build a type of web application called a REST API. 0:16 To define a REST API, we first need to talk about a traditional web application. 0:21 Traditional web applications handle both serverside and clientside concerns. 0:25 Say you build a web application to keep a record of your favorite recipes. 0:30 To view a certain recipe, you'd click on that recipe's URL, and 0:34 your browser would request that recipe from a server. 0:37 A traditional server side application would respond to that request by finding 0:40 the RESP data in a database, assembling that data into HTML templates and 0:45 sending that HTML back to the browser to be displayed. 0:50 Seems reasonable but what if you wanted to use that same RESP information to build 0:53 a mobile app or an entirely different application? 0:57 That's where REST API comes in, when you request a specific recipe in a RESTful 1:01 application, the application responds only with the recipe data, 1:05 typically in the form of JSON. 1:09 Sending JSON data rather than HTML means the back end only has to be built once. 1:11 While any number of front end applications can consume and display the data. 1:16 When designing an application this way, 1:20 you can manipulate the same data in endless ways. 1:22 If I have a REST API for recipes, for example, I could create a recipe website. 1:25 But I could also use the same data to create a meal planning app, 1:30 a calorie tracking app, a virtual cookbook, and on, and on. 1:33 As another good example, think about the Twitter app on your phone. 1:37 The phone app makes a request to Twitter RESP API, 1:40 to get the tweets before you see them. 1:43 The JSON from Twitter's API is then formatted and displayed on your phone. 1:46 But the Twitter API allows the same tweet data to be accessed and 1:50 used by a web browser, a smart TV, or a home IoT device. 1:54 REST APIs can provide data and content for rich web applications, mobile apps, 1:57 and other serverside applications, 2:02 even those applications written in other programming languages. 2:04 Basically, a REST API lets you retrieve data and 2:08 present that data in any way you want, providing amazing flexibility. 2:11 I'll review some key concepts in this course, but to be successful, 2:15 you should be familiar with the basics of node, 2:19 building a serverside application with Express, and Express middleware. 2:22 You should also be familiar with asynchronous JavaScript, 2:26 specifically using Callbacks, Promises, and Async Await. 2:29 See the teacher's notes below for the prerequisite courses. 2:32 In this course, we'll use Node and 2:36 Express to build out a simple API that provides data about famous quotes. 2:38 When we're finished, users will be able to request famous quotes from our API, 2:43 as well as add new quotes, edit and delete existing quotes, and 2:47 request a random quote. 2:50 As we build this project, you'll learn more about how API's work and 2:52 specifically, how to build one with Express. 2:56 Let's dig a bit more into the structure of an API. 2:59