API call in Python

API stands for Application Programming Interface.
In Simple words, it’s an interface which allows websites to exchange/expose data within different websites or anyone requesting the API.
API are hosted on servers, when a application calls the API it returns data based on the ‘endpoint’.
Typically API responses are in JSON format. (Read and Write JSON file in python)
Accessing a Simple “no auth” API:
A simple no auth API is a simple web address which requires no authentication and returns a JSON response when called.
For the example we will be using the https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/ prebuilt API.
API may have endpoints to access a section of data.
The Jsonplaceholder API has these endpoints.
/posts | 100 posts |
/comments | 500 comments |
/albums | 100 albums |
/photos | 5000 photos |
/todos | 200 todos |
/users | 10 users |
Lets write the code to access /posts endpoint of jsonplaceholder api.
To call the web address we will use the “request” package of python
Saving– Convert JSON list/dict response to string using json package and write it to a .json file.
import json
#import json package
import requests
#import requests package
api_endpoint="https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts"
response = requests.get(api_endpoint)
print(response.status_code)
#print status code 200 if success
data_json=response.json()
#access the json part of the full response
# for i in data_json:
#uncomment to print every entry in json file
# print(i)
jsontostring=json.dumps(data_json)
#convert list to string
file=open("apires.json",'w')
#opens or create file "apires.json" in same folder
file.write(jsontostring)
#write the string to file
file.close() #close file to save file
Try to access the /user endpoint or only the 50th post in /post api
Read the full documentation of API HERE.