1 00:00:02,070 --> 00:00:05,620 Now, before we now dive into building APIs 2 00:00:05,620 --> 00:00:08,610 and how we can build our own APIs and services, 3 00:00:08,610 --> 00:00:11,810 there is one very important differentiation 4 00:00:11,810 --> 00:00:14,493 and clarification which I have to make here. 5 00:00:15,590 --> 00:00:17,500 In the past in this course, 6 00:00:17,500 --> 00:00:21,930 we often also used third-party JavaScript packages 7 00:00:21,930 --> 00:00:24,580 like Express or the Stripe package. 8 00:00:24,580 --> 00:00:27,200 And I did mention that those packages 9 00:00:27,200 --> 00:00:30,880 in the end also could be called services that we use 10 00:00:30,880 --> 00:00:32,820 because they provide certain features 11 00:00:32,820 --> 00:00:34,790 which we use in our project. 12 00:00:34,790 --> 00:00:37,680 And that those packages also had an API 13 00:00:37,680 --> 00:00:40,200 because an API is just a general term 14 00:00:40,200 --> 00:00:43,020 for describing the bridge between your code 15 00:00:43,020 --> 00:00:47,100 to a third-party package or web service. 16 00:00:47,100 --> 00:00:48,900 So therefore, we can of course say 17 00:00:48,900 --> 00:00:51,700 that when we talk about services and APIs, 18 00:00:51,700 --> 00:00:54,400 we could talk about third-party packages 19 00:00:54,400 --> 00:00:56,690 which offer a certain API to us 20 00:00:56,690 --> 00:01:00,630 or web services that expose certain URLs 21 00:01:00,630 --> 00:01:02,920 to which we can send requests. 22 00:01:02,920 --> 00:01:06,450 And as in the case of Stripe, that might also be connected 23 00:01:06,450 --> 00:01:08,610 and you might have a JavaScript package 24 00:01:08,610 --> 00:01:10,700 offered by a service provider, 25 00:01:10,700 --> 00:01:15,150 which talks to that service web API under the hood. 26 00:01:15,150 --> 00:01:17,940 That's what the Stripe package did for us. 27 00:01:17,940 --> 00:01:20,890 We didn't send requests directly to Stripe 28 00:01:20,890 --> 00:01:22,600 from inside our code there. 29 00:01:22,600 --> 00:01:26,053 Instead, we used the Stripe package, which did that for us. 30 00:01:27,360 --> 00:01:29,760 Now, in case of a JavaScript package, 31 00:01:29,760 --> 00:01:33,430 the API would be the collection of methods and objects 32 00:01:33,430 --> 00:01:36,090 and properties that are documented 33 00:01:36,090 --> 00:01:39,750 and that we can use in our code to use the functionalities 34 00:01:39,750 --> 00:01:41,980 provided by that package. 35 00:01:41,980 --> 00:01:44,710 So that's what this package would expose them. 36 00:01:44,710 --> 00:01:47,660 And if we would wanna build such a package on our own, 37 00:01:47,660 --> 00:01:50,850 we would have to dive deeper into frontend 38 00:01:50,850 --> 00:01:53,530 and especially JavaScript development 39 00:01:53,530 --> 00:01:55,790 since we would need extra tools 40 00:01:55,790 --> 00:01:58,130 and would need to use npm, 41 00:01:58,130 --> 00:02:01,960 this tool which was installed together with Node.js 42 00:02:01,960 --> 00:02:04,300 to build such a package. 43 00:02:04,300 --> 00:02:07,000 It's possible, but beyond the scope of this course, 44 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:09,180 and definitely more advanced. 45 00:02:09,180 --> 00:02:10,259 Building such a package 46 00:02:10,259 --> 00:02:12,560 is something you can do as a web developer, 47 00:02:12,560 --> 00:02:15,160 but it also requires many other skills, 48 00:02:15,160 --> 00:02:17,940 which are not necessarily skills you need to have 49 00:02:17,940 --> 00:02:19,930 as a web developer. 50 00:02:19,930 --> 00:02:21,460 So therefore, that's not the part 51 00:02:21,460 --> 00:02:23,760 on which we will focus here. 52 00:02:23,760 --> 00:02:25,830 Instead, in this course section, 53 00:02:25,830 --> 00:02:28,230 we'll do something which you'll have to do a lot 54 00:02:28,230 --> 00:02:32,890 as a web developer, we'll build a URL-based API, 55 00:02:32,890 --> 00:02:36,690 so a web service that exposes certain URLs 56 00:02:36,690 --> 00:02:38,710 to which requests can be sent. 57 00:02:38,710 --> 00:02:41,010 And then for those incoming requests, 58 00:02:41,010 --> 00:02:43,290 certain actions will be triggered. 59 00:02:43,290 --> 00:02:46,630 And to be precise, those actions would be triggered 60 00:02:46,630 --> 00:02:51,010 by sending requests to certain so-called endpoints, 61 00:02:51,010 --> 00:02:54,880 which is a certain URL reached by a request 62 00:02:54,880 --> 00:02:59,000 that has a clearly specified HTTP method: 63 00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:01,450 get, post, patch, put, delete. 64 00:03:01,450 --> 00:03:03,290 You learned about them before. 65 00:03:03,290 --> 00:03:06,850 They will become important again in this course section. 66 00:03:06,850 --> 00:03:10,430 Now the key thing about such a URL-based API 67 00:03:10,430 --> 00:03:14,090 is that different requests sent to different URLs 68 00:03:14,090 --> 00:03:18,380 with different HTTP methods will trigger different actions 69 00:03:18,380 --> 00:03:21,600 and therefore get back different responses. 70 00:03:21,600 --> 00:03:22,720 And here, of course, 71 00:03:22,720 --> 00:03:24,950 you need a lot of web development skills 72 00:03:24,950 --> 00:03:28,090 because as you will see throughout this course section, 73 00:03:28,090 --> 00:03:30,270 we will still apply what you learned. 74 00:03:30,270 --> 00:03:33,480 You don't need to learn a bunch of brand new things. 75 00:03:33,480 --> 00:03:36,450 Instead, we'll just tweak a couple of smaller things 76 00:03:36,450 --> 00:03:40,800 here and there and introduce a few new concepts. 77 00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:44,410 But generally, we'll still be building a web backend 78 00:03:44,410 --> 00:03:47,350 with any programming language of your choice, 79 00:03:47,350 --> 00:03:51,020 Node.js in this example here in this course section, 80 00:03:51,020 --> 00:03:55,160 and then we can take our existing web developer skills 81 00:03:55,160 --> 00:03:58,180 and build a brand new thing with it, 82 00:03:58,180 --> 00:04:00,313 an API instead of a website.