My learnings from API 101 Postman Session

Recently, I attended the API 101 Postman session conducted by hackslash, with Anushka Dubey ma'am as the speaker. In this session, she explained the following:

Understanding APIs

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow services to communicate with each other. Software has become more complex and collaborative over the years, and developers no longer need to create every service from scratch. APIs enable developers to access data from a service (like Google or Twitter) without any knowledge of how the codebase has been implemented.

Postman: An API Platform

Postman is an API platform for building and using APIs. It simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration, allowing developers to create better APIs faster. Postman is designed for DESIGN, TEST, MOCK, MONITOR, DOCUMENT, and DISCOVER APIs. It is an industry-standard tool and a collaborative API development platform that simplifies creating, using, and testing APIs with a user interface.

Making API Requests

To make a simple API request, three ingredients are required:

1. Method: The HTTP method (GET, POST, etc.)
2. Address/Endpoint: The URL or endpoint
3. Path: The specific path within the endpoint

Building API requests involves understanding parameters (included in the query), authorization, headers, and body data. Body data types can include form data, JSON, text, HTML, XML, files, GraphQL, and more. These data types are often supplied with POST and PUT requests.

Handling API Responses

When receiving API responses, it's essential to understand the following elements:

1. Status Codes: HTTP status codes (e.g., 200 OK, 201 Created, 404 Not Found)
2. Headers: Response headers
3. Body Data: Accessing and parsing the response body data

Hands-On Experience

During the session, we learned the essentials of retrieving and updating API data, including addresses, methods, parameters, body data, and response codes. Anushka Dubey ma'am also provided a hands-on session where we practiced making GET, POST, and DELETE API calls and testing the responses.

Key Takeaways

The key takeaways from this API 101 Postman session were:

1. Basic understanding of APIs and their role in modern software development
2. Familiarity with API-related terminologies
3. Practical experience in testing APIs using Postman
4. Understanding API documentation and its importance

Overall, the session provided valuable insights into the world of APIs and practical hands-on experience with Postman, an industry-standard API development platform.