As a web developer, often times you will be responsible for creating an API, or Application Programming Interface. Quite simply, your API takes in requests and returns structured responses. API design is one of the most useful skills you can master though it involves a lot of different moving parts: authentication, authorization, rate limiting for requests, serializing the data from the database into a structured format, etc. This course will walk through the most important parts of creating an API along with a framework.

Course Objectives

We will use three different backend technologies/frameworks to create our APIs:

• First, we’ll make a simple Student Data API using Express and Mongo. We’ll also see how to use an external service like mLab to host our MongoDB instance.
• Second, we’ll dive deeper into how to make an API using Django and Django REST Framework. This is a continuation of a Reddit-clone project we build in Learn Web Development with Django and Python3.
• Third, we’ll use ASP.NET which is more commonly used in Windows-based environments. We’ll set up a MySQL Database with SQL Server Management Studio for storing the data.

Section 1: Introduction to REST APIs.

• REST and RESTful APIs
• Create an API with Express/NodeJS and MongoDB

Section 2: Building a real-world REST API with Python, Django and DRF

• Hands-on Assignment: Creating an API Part 1
• Hands-on Assignment: Creating an API Part 2

Section 3: Building a REST API with ASP.NET and SQL Server Management Studio.

• Project Part 1: Create a REST API with ASP.NET and SQL Server Management Studio