Description
In this course, you will learn the basic and advanced skills required to become an efficient backend Engineer using Flask. Real-world examples and concept explanations that relate directly to your day-to-day tasks as a backend engineer.
REST APIs: How They Work and What You Need to Know
To understand REST, we need to review some key terms first:
- A client is a person or program using the API. The client makes requests to the API in order to retrieve some information or change something within the application. Your web browser is a client — it interacts with APIs. The requested info is sent back to your browser and displayed on your screen.
- A resource is any piece of information that the API can provide the client. For instance, a resource in Facebook’s API could be a user, a page, a photo, or a post. Each resource has a unique name, called the resource identifier.
- A server is used by the application that receives client requests and contains resources that the client wants. The server has an API to interact with clients without giving them direct access to content stored in its database.
Now for our definition. REST is a set of guidelines that software can use to communicate over the internet in order to make integrations simple and scalable. A REST API (also called a “RESTful” API) is a specific type of API that follows these guidelines.
