Week 9 - Session 2 - Web APIs & Express

blog image source
In computer programming, an application programming interface (API) is a set of subroutine definitions, protocols, and tools for building application software. A server-side web API is a programmatic interface consisting of one or more publicly exposed endpoints to a defined request–response message system, typically expressed in JSON or XML, which is exposed via the web—most commonly by means of an HTTP-based web server.

 Web API’s - Benefits:
  • Simplified server code - not concerned with UI
  • Allows for better professional specialization
  • Separation allows server and client-side applications to evolve independently
  • Increased portability of UI components
    • Single Web API can power multiple UI's - website, mobile app etc
Express is a (relatively) lightweight server-side JavaScript framework that runs on a Node.js server, a web application can be built up in Node with the help of the HTTP module. With Express, it will take it to the next level and make apps configurable and easily extensible.
 Express is the most popular Node web framework and is the underlying library for a number of other popular Node web frameworks. It provides mechanisms to:
  • Write handlers for requests with different HTTP verbs at different URL paths (routes).
  • Integrate with "view" rendering engines in order to generate responses by inserting data into templates.
  • Set common web application settings like the port to use for connecting, and the location of templates that are used for rendering the response.
  • Add additional request processing "middleware" at any point within the request handling pipeline.
While Express itself is fairly minimalist, developers have created compatible middleware packages to address almost any web development problem. There are libraries to work with cookies, sessions, user logins, URL parameters, POST data, security headers, and many more.

 What is an API? In English, please - https://medium.freecodecamp.org/what-is-an-api-in-english-please-b880a3214a82
Express - http://expressjs.com/
Express/Node introduction - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Server-side/Express_Nodejs/Introduction

Popular posts from this blog

Week 9 to 12 - Learning with MCR Codes

Image
My experience with  @MCRcodes   as a Quality Assurance Tester.  This is an evening part-time coding boot camp based in central Manchester which runs for 24 weeks, from February 2018 to July 2018. Week 9 (April 2018) - After spending two decades using the internet, I finally have an understanding how it works now, and the communication between the server and the client. Nice to create and run a simple server using Express and I now know what API actually means now, I think. Really appreciate how amazing and powerful the npm  package manager really  is, and looking forward to installing other future packages.  We have now started our back-end programming journey. Session 1 -  The Internet, the Web, HTTP Session 2 -  Web APIs & Express Week 10 - Really enjoying creating and reading test units for server assignments. Additionally, learning s ynchronous/a synchronous programming has been a tease.   Unfortunately, I was unable to attempt few classes due to unplanned c
Read more

Week 9 - Session 1 - The Internet, the Web, HTTP

Image
blog image source The internet, a worldwide network of computer networks, a llows transfer of information between networks, and the information is transferred using the internet protocol suite (IP/TCP). One of the most commonly used services on the internet is the world wide web (www). A primary mode of transferring data (resources) over the internet for billions. The application protocol that makes the web work is hypertext transfer protocol. blog image source As web developers, we are mainly interested in HTTP,  a protocol that web browsers and web servers use to communicate with each other over the Internet.  The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is designed to enable communications between clients and servers. HTTP works as a request-response protocol between a client and server. A web browser may be the client, and an application on a computer that hosts a website may be the server. How does the Internet work? -  https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Common_
Read more