APIs 101 with Postman

If you’re completely new to APIs, this webinar is for you. In this session, Rishit and Aanchal talk about API basics with a practical walkthrough which you could follow along with us using Postman. And finally, we also send you some swag (courtesy of Postman).

Our Agenda:
- What is an API?
- Why you should use APIs?
- The basic components of an API request
- Building and sending API requests
- A live follow along demo :D
- Developers love swags, let's send you some

Transcript

1. APIs 101 with
   Postman
   TEDx, TED-Ed Speaker
   Rishit Dagli
   @rishit_dagli
   Intern, Postman
   Aanchal Mishra
   @aanchalmishra_
   17 July
   6 PM IST (GMT+5:30)
   

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2. Agenda
   1 Intro to APIs and Postman
   2 Requests and responses
   3 Trying things out
   4 Follow-up resources
   5 Q&A
   go.postman.co/build
   

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3. ● TEDx and 2xTED-Ed Speaker
   ● I contribute to TensorFlow
   ● I love🧡 ML Research
   ● I love🧡 Hackathons
   ● My coordinates - www.rishit.tech
   Rishit Dagli
   $ whoami
   @rishit_dagli
   

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4. ● Student Community Intern, Postman
   ● Tech and Communities 💖
   Aanchal Mishra
   $ whoami
   @aanchalmishra__
   

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5. ⓘ Start presenting to display the audience questions on this slide.
   Audience Q&A Session
   

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6. APIs: A Digital Restaurant
   Client Server
   

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7. APIs: A bit Technical
   

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8. What’s an API?
   And why should I use one?
   ● Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow
   services to communicate with each other
   ● Software has become more complex and collaborative
   over the years. Developers no longer need to create
   every service from scratch.
   ● APIs allow developers to access data from a service (like
   Google or Twitter) without any knowledge of how the
   codebase has been implemented.
   

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9. There’s an API for everything
   Everything
   ● The Cat API
   ● OpenWeatherMap
   ● Genius
   ● Discord
   ● Youtube-to-MP3
   ● Spotify
   ● Twitter
   ● Facebook
   ● Google
   ● And so many more!
   

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10. APIS TURN SOFTWARE INTO LEGO® BRICKS
    

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11. More than 500,000 organizations & 13 Million developers use Postman
    98%
    of Fortune 500
    Organizations use Postman
    65%
    of Global 2000
    Organizations use Postman
    Postman is a collaborative API development platform that simplifies
    creating, using, and testing APIs with a UI
    What is Postman?
    

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12. Working APIs: Then and Now
    cURL Command Line Postman
    

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13. Requests and Responses
    

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14. Request-Response Pattern
    Client Server
    Request
    Response
    Resources
    Services
    Network
    API
    

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15. Making Requests
    The three ingredients to
    make a request:
    ● Method (GET, POST, etc)
    ● Address/Endpoint (URL)
    ● Path
    How we interact with the API
    

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16. Requests - Methods and Endpoints
    Method
    GET Retrieve information
    POST Send information
    PUT/PATCH Update information
    DELETE Delete information
    address of the server
    Bare minimum for a request
    https://www.google.com/search
    The scheme of
    the request
    Host
    Path
    Protocol
    destination where
    request can be heard
    and executed
    

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17. Specifying Detail
    Building your requests
    ● Parameters
    ○ In the query
    ● Authorization
    ● Headers and body
    ○ Data types
    

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18. Requests - Body
    The data payload
    ● Optional, but often supplied
    with POST and PUT requests
    ● Data types
    ○ form data
    ○ JSON
    ○ text
    ○ HTML
    ○ XML
    ○ files
    ○ GraphQL
    ○ … and more!
    {
    “name”: “Jane Doe”,
    “email”: “janedoe@email.com”,
    “birthYear”: 1970
    }
    JSON
    

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19. Receiving Responses
    Response elements
    ● Status codes (200 OK, 201
    Created, 404 Not found)
    ● Headers
    ● Accessing body data
    

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20. Follow Along
    Navigate to and fork
    https://bit.ly/api101-workshop
    

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21. Recap
    We learned request essentials to
    retrieve and update API data:
    ● Methods
    ● Addresses
    ● Parameters
    ● Authorization
    ● Body data
    

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22. Win
    Amazing
    Swag
    

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23. Trying Things Out
    Create your own public workspace with
    a collection using any API of your choice
    postman.com
    Send it to us, and we’ll send cool swag to
    the coolest project
    https://bit.ly/apis101-feedback
    1 2
    

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24. Share your learnings with
    #PostmanStudent
    

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25. Slides: http://bit.ly/apis101-slides
    

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26. Resources
    learning.postman.com
    Learning Center
    explore.postman.com
    API Network
    community.postman.com
    Forum
    

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27. Register Now: https://studentsummit21.eventbrite.com/?aff=api101
    

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28. Q&A
    

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29. ⓘ Start presenting to display the audience questions on this slide.
    Audience Q&A Session
    

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30. Thanks for coming!
    Have a question we didn’t cover?
    Tell us how the workshop went:
    bit.ly/apis101-feedback
    @rishit_dagli
    @aanchalmishra_
    

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