My First API 101 Workshop using Postman
It’s 11:00 am a good Friday morning, the 25th August 2023 and the ‘API 101 WORKSHOP’ has just started on Zoom. API, API, APiiiiii, what are APIs, according to Wikipedia an API is a way two or more computer programs communicate with each other over a given network (Wikipedia). Is there a way this API thing can be demystified for everyone to understand,I have good news for you, there is!
API is the way two or more computers or any intelligent devices communicate with each other. We can take an analogy of a Customer-Waiter-Chef pattern in a restaurant.
A customer makes an order through the waiter, the waiter takes the order to the chef, the chef prepares the food on the order, when the food is ready the waiter collects the order and takes to the customer. That is also how APIs work, a client (browser, another application and many more) makes a call to a remote server for a resource. The server checks for the resource, if the resource is found, the server then responds with the resource. Sounds interesting, let’s learn more.
It’s July 2023, I come across a link to Postman API fundamentals, clicked the link and created an account, took a 3 hour short course on a Sunday afternoon that earned me the Postman API fundamentals Student Expert badge.
With this course, thanks to #Postman for making this available to everyone, I managed to understand API more like before. Given that I had knowledge about APIs with systems we develop at flyhub, It was easier to get along with this course but nevertheless there were more details about APIs I learnt like, the types and categories of APIs, using postman to best work with APIs like setting dynamic variables, testing of APIs using Postman and how to work with workspace.
A few days later I get an email from Postman to apply for the Student Leader role for my institute, which I was interested in, I was tasked to fill in the application for the Student Leader which I did, recorded a video of me explaining about APIs to my Granny after which I sent the request. Now the wait was on to hear from Postman. A few days in. I received an email from Postman with the task to prepare and organize an Event about APIs in my community to talk about APIs which was to be used to assess whether I qualified for the Student Leader role or not.
Now the challenge was on. We had a meeting with the team at postman to orient me on how to plan and hold such a webinar about API, the session was really good as it detailed every piece of the puzzle that was needed and a date was set for the webinar. Here there was no turning back. A lot of preparations were done, with preparing the materials, adverts for the webinar, registration form and many more, first forward to 25th/ August/ 2023. Close to 72 participants applied for the session and on the webinar day about 23 attendees joined the online webinar for the session.
What happened in the webinar?
We had a simple agenda:-
i. Intro to APIs and Postman
ii. Requests and Responses
iii. Hands-on session
iv. Follow-up resources
v. Questions and Answers
Intro to APIs and Postman
Here we discussed how APIs relate to digital restaurant, the analogy of the waiter with the chef described above, what an API is and why should one use it, gave examples of APIs and where they are used in real-life. We further demystified the power of APIs in acting as small blocks that enable development of complex systems and lastly we talked about how Postman comes into play by comparing a request sent with a curl command and one sent via Postman, and from the comparison it showed that it was much easier to understand all the dynamics of a request in postman than it was with curl given it’s low level complexity.
If you are interested in taking the API fundamentals Student Expert course, click here and you will get access to the course.
Requests and Responses
Here we discussed the Request-Response Pattern, where a request gets sent from a client through the network to the server. We explained how this happens at a high level given that this was API 101 with an assumption that all attendees were new to APIs, We looked at terminologies like request, response, client, server, Network, resources, services and many more.
We further discussed about how one can make a request using HTTP request methods such as GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, how to use them and when. We discussed addresses/ endpoints (URL), paths, protocols as well as request parameters such as query strings and path variables and how to add and use these in postman finalizing this segment with a discussion about request bodies and the different data payload types/ categories used in API namely, form data, JSON, Text, xml and many more and response status codes such as 200 — OK, 404 — Not Found, 201 — Created and many more.
Hands-on session
After we finished the Requests and Responses segment, it was time for the hands-on practical session. Attendees opened their postman applications and those working with the web version, loaded the app too. We forked an already existing postman collection prepared by the Postman team and we worked with the /jokes api. During this period we practically tested how to:-
i. Retrieve data from an API using a GET method
ii. Creating data using a POST method
iii. Updating data using a PUT method
iv. Deleting data using a DELETE method
When working with these HTTP methods, we learnt how to use request parameters as a we to request and ask only what we want in our requests, like only requesting for a single record using it’s ID, using query strings to limit the data returned to a single type.
Follow-up resources
Once we finalized the hands on session, resources on how to learn more about API and working with APIs were shared with the attendees which included learning Center, API Network and many more as well challenging the attendees to create a public workspace and testing with consuming an API of their choice and submit their work and writing about the webinar in general on blog site like dev.to and medium.com and share their experience and what they learnt with us.
On top of sharing resources to learn more, we had a Q & A with the attendees where attendees asked questions around API and Postman, and that concluded the webinar at 12:33 pm EAT.
I want to thank #Postman for the support and help rendered before, during and after the session. Much appreciated, as the team has been so kind and forthcoming.
Having put together a report on the event which was shared with the team at #Postman, I am happy to say that I was accepted in the Postman Student Leader Program and below is my badge.
If you are interested in taking the API fundamentals Student Expert course, click here and you will get access to the course.
Until next time, stay safe and know you are appreciated.