[Tutor] Info on APIs and handling JSON

[Mats Wichmann]

On 11/16/18 12:31 PM, Anil Duggirala wrote:
> hello,
> 
> I have been looking for documentation about how to connect to APIs and
> using the provided info within python. I have found a few websites
> talking about very particular cases. Probably the most enlightening was
> the 'requests' library documentation. Can someone please point me to
> serious and comprehensive info on how to deal with APIs and then
> handling JSON and other provided info in python? Maybe a book?

json handling is simple: the json module is part of the Python standard
library.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/json.html

APIs have no specific answer.  An API is an Application Programming
Interface, each is different and specific to the project in question but
refers to how you communicate with the functionality of that project
from your program. Some popular ones have Python adaptations available,
otherwise you read the documentation and figure out how to code your
own. Sometimes the API is a style that lets you use an existing Python
project, even if it doesn't know anything about the thing you want to
talk to. requests is a good example - is the project you're interested
in provides a RESTful API, using HTTP protocols, then requests can
certainly be used to talk to it, but you still need to discover the
specifics and code them up yourself.  Other APIs provide other interface
styles.