APIs - Application Programming Interfaces
APIs - Application Programming Interfaces
An Application Programming Interface, or API, is a way that your own program can interact with data from another piece of software. That software might be something provided by Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.
Some APIs are open APIs, which means you can use them without having to register first. These are typically rate limited meaning that you can only access the API a certain number of times per minute, or per hour. These limits are usually pretty low. They are fine for initial testing, but for anything beyond that, you typically need to get something called an API key.
An API key is something you should NOT hard code in your Python code and then store in Github. Instead, you should use the same techniques used for the OAuth GITHUB_CLIENT_ID and GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET that are documented here. Namely, it involves:
setting up an env.sh for use when running on your own laptop or Repl.it
using ‘configuration variables’ when running on Heroku
There are two main ways to work with an API from Python code
Directly, through calls to a library such as urllib or requests, where you directly interact with the web addresses provided in the API.
Through a Python library that provides a more convenient interface.
I highly recommend using a library whenever one is available.
Google Places API
Working Example: https://github.com/ucsd-cse-spis-2016/spis19-webapps-google-places-demo
Main Page: https://developers.google.com/places/
Python Library: https://github.com/slimkrazy/python-google-places
Code to do it “by hand”: https://andrewpwheeler.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/using-the-google-places-api-in-python/
Commentary from stack overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18485044/where-do-i-find-the-google-places-api-client-library-for-python
Check this out for tons of free and public API's you can use (there are some hilarious ones too).