How APIs Work

Tuesday, 2/04

An API allows a piece of software to communciate with another piece of software. APIs generate data in an easier way. To use an API, you create a URL, which is built with pre-defined blocks of data that work as keys to identify values. API URLs have different parts, which allow you to understand different parts of an API. For example, the ampersand character is used to split the key value pairs and a question mark is used to indicate the start of the query string. An API does not need to contain a frontend.

To learn about APIs, I read more about what an API is and also watched a video about API concepts.

While learning about APIs I came across these terms that I didn’t understand and went through them later to find out what they mean.

pow: a zero-configuration Rack server that allows local apps to run locally

prax: a pure Ruby alternative to Pow

subdomains: a domain that is part of another domain

AngularJS: a structural framework for dynamic web apps, it lets you use HTML as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components

Ember.js: an open-source JavaScript web framework

JSON: stands for JavasScript Object Notation, it allows data to be stored and transported

bundle exec rspec: used to run tests