Welcome to this codelab on creating your own web api! Before getting started, let's make sure you have some things installed.
While you're waiting on those to get installed, read this to get an idea of what an API is, and what we will be making.
An API, also called an Application Programming Interface, is the way you communicate with a piece of software. A web API is the way you communicate with software that exists on the web. Some popular examples:
Often times when creating a web application, development is split into two categories: Back End and Front End, this codelab is all about the back end.
Abstractly, the back end is everything that the user doesn't see. In web dev world, the back end usually refers to everything that's on the server as opposed to the client.
Even if you're not into web development, putting some sort of computation on a server and being able to access the results of that computation through some kind of API is something you'll likely have to do at some point. It's useful to know how to make an API to help with these situations.
Okay, okay, enough with the abstract. Let's do something. We're going to make the api for a dating app (Happy Valentines Day!!). In a future meeting, we'll make the front end for this app.