Wait, what is a REST API?

API?

• how two pieces of code/software communicate
• provides a way for developers to use a piece of software.

API vs UI

→ UI (User Interface) is for Users 👩🧑 - Interface like visual cues, buttons, keyboard shortcuts

→ API (Application Programming Interface) is for programs 💻 🤖 - Interface like systems, modules, programming languages, standards, protocols

How an API is developed and used

• 👩‍💻👨‍💻 As a coder, you use all kinds of software to write code: tools, plugins, libraries, frameworks, SDKs, your OS, etc.
• All software has some private implementations **that **are hidden under complexities, so you don't have to know about these details
• API is the exposed set of features and abstractions that allows the devs to use your code ****
  • ✅ Ideally, you can use an API easily without having to "pierce through abstraction", i.e. hack the code
  • ✅ Ideally, you can understand an API easily via documentation and conventions (e.g. naming, modularity), without having to read its code
  • e.g. It's easier to call console.log on the browser than going through Google Chrome dev tool's code and figuring out how to hack it and print a text

Some examples:

• A class Dog that you wrote has APIs: bark() eat(), ... that the users of this class can call

• Express API specifies how we use express: creating an app, using the request and response object, etc

• Services you love has Public APIs that allow you to integrate: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, ...

  7 Using Public APIs

• Gadgets like Fitbit, Oculus VR headset, LEAP motion has a great set of APIs so we can interface with them quickly

• Node and your browser exposes the Console API, so we can do console.log(123)

• The OS you use (Windows, Linux, Mac) allows you to configure things via the command-line/terminal

• The browser's HTML DOM API allows you to manipulate and change elements