1 00:00:01,200 --> 00:00:02,420 All right welcome back. 2 00:00:02,760 --> 00:00:07,940 So this topic this section that we're going to talk about is one of my favorite things to teach. 3 00:00:08,040 --> 00:00:09,860 It's really really fun for me. 4 00:00:09,900 --> 00:00:17,040 And I know I say that a few times in this course but this is by far the actual favorite topic of mine 5 00:00:18,120 --> 00:00:20,620 and it's really exciting to learn in my opinion. 6 00:00:20,640 --> 00:00:22,280 We're going to talk about A.P. guys. 7 00:00:22,530 --> 00:00:27,180 And the reason that it's exciting to learn is that it really opens up the possibilities for what you 8 00:00:27,180 --> 00:00:28,260 can build. 9 00:00:28,260 --> 00:00:34,950 You can make all sorts of amazing applications that use data from other applications or that rely on 10 00:00:34,950 --> 00:00:36,250 other applications. 11 00:00:36,360 --> 00:00:42,000 Basically you know you can stand on the shoulders of giants and and make some really awesome things 12 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:45,910 for that having to do a ton of work and do everything yourself from scratch. 13 00:00:46,440 --> 00:00:49,380 So the subtitle is connecting with other apps. 14 00:00:49,800 --> 00:00:55,650 And that's really the gist of all of this is what if we want to display a map or I want to get latitude 15 00:00:55,650 --> 00:00:58,790 longitude data or I want to get weather data. 16 00:00:59,010 --> 00:01:04,020 You don't need to go put out weather sensors and connect them to the Internet and then get that data 17 00:01:04,020 --> 00:01:04,470 . 18 00:01:04,650 --> 00:01:10,110 Someone else has done that and made it all nice and easy for you to understand and interact with and 19 00:01:10,110 --> 00:01:12,950 then you just write code that uses that API. 20 00:01:13,470 --> 00:01:18,660 So without getting too far ahead of ourselves API stands for application programming interface although 21 00:01:18,930 --> 00:01:22,020 it's actually application program interface. 22 00:01:22,080 --> 00:01:24,150 Some people say programming it doesn't matter. 23 00:01:24,150 --> 00:01:29,940 But the idea is that it's an interface for programmers for code or computers to talk to one another 24 00:01:29,950 --> 00:01:30,290 . 25 00:01:30,690 --> 00:01:33,800 So I can write code like this code it's very small. 26 00:01:33,810 --> 00:01:37,730 But this code right here is interacting with Facebook. 27 00:01:37,770 --> 00:01:41,970 So Facebook has an API that allows me to get data from Facebook. 28 00:01:42,120 --> 00:01:47,760 So we have it you know human interface when I go on Facebook myself and hopefully don't spend too much 29 00:01:47,760 --> 00:01:54,270 time there but when I do that I'm looking at the human interface the HTML usually that I see it's rendered 30 00:01:54,270 --> 00:01:59,810 to me nice wig out photos and colors and text and fonts and all that stuff. 31 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:05,940 When I want to make an app though that uses Facebook data so popular example would be something like 32 00:02:05,940 --> 00:02:10,860 Tinder if you're not familiar with Tinder you're probably lying. 33 00:02:10,860 --> 00:02:18,090 But if you're actually not familiar with Tinder Dating ish application that you go on sign up with your 34 00:02:18,090 --> 00:02:24,000 Facebook account and it shows you people's photos you can kind of say yes or no swipe left or right 35 00:02:24,010 --> 00:02:24,090 . 36 00:02:24,180 --> 00:02:30,780 But most importantly to what I'm talking about here is that it shows you if you have any likes in common 37 00:02:30,780 --> 00:02:31,050 with them. 38 00:02:31,050 --> 00:02:37,770 So if you have any favorite movies that you've added to to both of your Facebook profiles or books or 39 00:02:38,910 --> 00:02:43,980 music as well and a few other things and it also will tell you how many friends you have in common based 40 00:02:43,980 --> 00:02:45,030 off of Facebook. 41 00:02:45,240 --> 00:02:51,030 So that data is not just coming from the regular Facebook website like if I went on Facebook I could 42 00:02:51,030 --> 00:02:57,060 find that out if I matched someone I could go on their Facebook page if it's public at least and I could 43 00:02:57,240 --> 00:02:58,610 manually compare. 44 00:02:58,740 --> 00:03:00,370 Do we like the same movies. 45 00:03:00,600 --> 00:03:04,810 But of course that's not happening behind the scenes intender source code. 46 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:10,330 There's code that's connecting to Facebook's API and saying Hey these two people. 47 00:03:10,740 --> 00:03:17,250 Well it's probably more like hey this person Nicole has matched with let's get their data and save it 48 00:03:17,250 --> 00:03:21,360 to our database and then let's take cold's data that we already have in our database and compare them 49 00:03:21,370 --> 00:03:21,470 . 50 00:03:21,570 --> 00:03:27,820 But the idea is we're talking or tender is talking to Facebook and that's one example. 51 00:03:27,930 --> 00:03:30,670 But API eyes are literally everywhere nowadays. 52 00:03:30,780 --> 00:03:33,500 Pretty much every application you use. 53 00:03:34,440 --> 00:03:42,840 So the term API is actually a broader term that refers to any type of code any interface that is made 54 00:03:42,840 --> 00:03:44,940 for other code to communicate with. 55 00:03:44,940 --> 00:03:52,500 So if we go on Wikipedia actually the definition the textbook definition I guess is in computer programming 56 00:03:52,500 --> 00:03:54,460 an application programming interface. 57 00:03:54,480 --> 00:03:55,680 So they use programming. 58 00:03:55,710 --> 00:04:00,590 That program is a set of routines protocols and tools for building software and applications. 59 00:04:00,600 --> 00:04:09,210 So that's very broad and that is basically saying it's any set of tools code routines that you can use 60 00:04:09,270 --> 00:04:10,550 in an application. 61 00:04:10,770 --> 00:04:14,540 So it could be a database API. 62 00:04:14,550 --> 00:04:16,510 So that has nothing to do with the Internet. 63 00:04:16,590 --> 00:04:19,920 It's just how you connect to a database locally on your computer. 64 00:04:19,920 --> 00:04:24,620 It could be a video card API or a hard drive a hard disk drive API. 65 00:04:24,870 --> 00:04:31,320 So those are kind of other non web based examples or when I was learning Java in high school I used 66 00:04:31,320 --> 00:04:39,600 an API to to incorporate the graphical elements buttons and windows and stuff into my applications. 67 00:04:39,720 --> 00:04:45,670 Really ugly Mario clone that I made and like solitaire I used an API for that. 68 00:04:45,720 --> 00:04:48,510 So that is a different kind of context. 69 00:04:48,570 --> 00:04:54,570 Typically what people mean when they refer to an API today is a web API which has its own section here 70 00:04:55,170 --> 00:04:57,630 but that is a subset of API in general. 71 00:04:57,630 --> 00:05:05,460 So API is in general any code whether it's a library a package or module a web API some sort of interface 72 00:05:05,460 --> 00:05:10,670 to work with image analysis on a computer or a database. 73 00:05:10,890 --> 00:05:14,220 They're all over the place so many different things that they do. 74 00:05:14,280 --> 00:05:19,450 You can use them in your own code web API is are more specialized. 75 00:05:19,510 --> 00:05:25,930 They have to do with web interfaces to other code or to other applications. 76 00:05:26,170 --> 00:05:33,100 So for instance the Facebook API we talked about the way that an application gets that data is through 77 00:05:33,220 --> 00:05:34,690 the Web through the Internet. 78 00:05:34,750 --> 00:05:37,440 I am requesting that data from Facebook. 79 00:05:37,660 --> 00:05:45,400 So just like when I request a web page lets say Reddit dot com slash slash Ah wench's cute photos or 80 00:05:45,460 --> 00:05:52,140 cute images of dogs and cats usually with the occasional reptile lover slash weirdo. 81 00:05:52,330 --> 00:05:54,070 No offense to anyone who has reptiles. 82 00:05:54,070 --> 00:05:56,640 I just can't can't get behind that. 83 00:05:56,710 --> 00:06:02,620 So when I request this hit enter and I'm seeing the human version the interface for me and for all of 84 00:06:02,620 --> 00:06:03,280 us. 85 00:06:03,580 --> 00:06:06,880 But there's also an interface for code to interact with. 86 00:06:06,880 --> 00:06:13,940 There's a web API where we request it and rather than seeing this our computer sees this. 87 00:06:14,080 --> 00:06:18,700 So I'll talk about what this is something called Jaison and just one video from now. 88 00:06:18,850 --> 00:06:24,550 But it's basically another format of data that is better and easier for computers to use. 89 00:06:24,550 --> 00:06:31,060 It doesn't have any of the fluff that we have here because if I'm writing an app let's say want to pit 90 00:06:31,060 --> 00:06:36,580 dogs versus cats and I want to count the number of posts every day that mentioned dogs. 91 00:06:36,590 --> 00:06:40,660 The number of posts every day that mentioned cats and have a chart so you can visit my web site and 92 00:06:40,660 --> 00:06:45,450 there's a live chart that's updating what I would need to do is get that from Reddit. 93 00:06:45,450 --> 00:06:51,850 I would need to ask Reddit you know give me the data today or every hour that update it give me the 94 00:06:51,850 --> 00:06:53,710 current front page of our site. 95 00:06:53,730 --> 00:06:54,170 Ah. 96 00:06:54,340 --> 00:06:56,060 And then I would go through the data. 97 00:06:56,200 --> 00:07:02,710 This data here and calculate you know search for dog search for cat and tally it up and update my graph 98 00:07:02,710 --> 00:07:03,640 every hour. 99 00:07:03,670 --> 00:07:05,860 So that's a simple example. 100 00:07:05,920 --> 00:07:09,160 You can do much more complex things of course. 101 00:07:09,160 --> 00:07:12,210 So here are some other examples of API is Twitter. 102 00:07:12,340 --> 00:07:18,680 You can do things like give me all the tweets that mention ice cream or you know unlike CNN they are 103 00:07:18,940 --> 00:07:24,010 always like live tweets coming in that mentions certain hashtags or certain news events. 104 00:07:24,130 --> 00:07:32,020 Facebook as we talked about so many things you can get from Facebook's API profile pictures likes and 105 00:07:32,080 --> 00:07:38,290 you probably see it all the time in applications where you see that kind of warning or question that 106 00:07:38,290 --> 00:07:43,200 pops up from Facebook it's like this application wants to use your data. 107 00:07:43,290 --> 00:07:45,130 Do you accept it or not or do you. 108 00:07:45,130 --> 00:07:45,880 Permitted or not. 109 00:07:45,880 --> 00:07:47,170 And you can kind of change things. 110 00:07:47,170 --> 00:07:51,920 Who can see what and what data it can access whether API. 111 00:07:51,920 --> 00:07:55,970 So there's lots of weather API is out there that do different things. 112 00:07:56,120 --> 00:08:02,820 Reddit API can we just saw very briefly Google Places what gas stations are near someone. 113 00:08:02,950 --> 00:08:06,000 Google Maps of course to get a map going. 114 00:08:06,100 --> 00:08:11,940 The Yelp API can do things like give me 10 restaurants in the zip code nine for one one. 115 00:08:13,150 --> 00:08:14,500 Lots and lots things you can do. 116 00:08:14,500 --> 00:08:21,220 And then of course by combining them together you can do even cooler things which is actually this site 117 00:08:21,700 --> 00:08:28,100 I teach dot com if this then that is a way to connect API. 118 00:08:28,690 --> 00:08:31,660 So there are 309 services. 119 00:08:31,930 --> 00:08:39,160 And basically this is kind of confusing I guess but it's a way to have a visual interface to connect 120 00:08:39,160 --> 00:08:40,930 API to do things for you. 121 00:08:41,320 --> 00:08:47,440 So I picked up photography on the side and there's so many photography sites if you want to do the whole 122 00:08:47,440 --> 00:08:57,400 social media thing and there's flicker and Instagram Facebook 500 pixels Dropbox and I want and iCloud 123 00:08:57,400 --> 00:09:02,380 and let's say I want all of those and any time I post a photo to Instagram I want it to post to all 124 00:09:02,380 --> 00:09:03,930 of those other places. 125 00:09:04,030 --> 00:09:07,240 You can do that using if this then that. 126 00:09:07,240 --> 00:09:09,760 So these are all the services that they allow. 127 00:09:09,760 --> 00:09:14,170 They worked with so Facebook's API Twitter's API get hubs. 128 00:09:14,350 --> 00:09:17,020 There are some I think there is something called the Internet of Things. 129 00:09:17,050 --> 00:09:24,010 So API is that will exist for physical objects like a thermostat where you can control the temperature 130 00:09:24,010 --> 00:09:32,320 through an API or a video camera security camera where you can use code to turn it on and off or rotate 131 00:09:32,320 --> 00:09:37,740 it or a light bulb that you can change the hue the color of dynamically using code. 132 00:09:37,750 --> 00:09:44,290 So you know in college I had friends who would take light bulbs that were smart electronic ones connected 133 00:09:44,290 --> 00:09:49,960 to the Internet plug them into their dorm and then it would automatically take whatever music was playing 134 00:09:49,960 --> 00:09:50,110 . 135 00:09:50,110 --> 00:09:54,310 They wrote some code that would then kind of turn the lights on and off and change the color to make 136 00:09:54,310 --> 00:09:58,440 a little visualizer for the music. 137 00:09:58,570 --> 00:10:00,740 So there's tons of things on here. 138 00:10:00,790 --> 00:10:03,210 This is just a side thing that's cool for you to check out. 139 00:10:03,220 --> 00:10:08,470 If this than that if you're not familiar with it you can look at browse recipes. 140 00:10:08,470 --> 00:10:13,930 So these are some of the popular things people will do like. 141 00:10:14,110 --> 00:10:20,410 Remind yourself to put on sunscreen when the heat index is high so it will automatically connect to 142 00:10:20,410 --> 00:10:26,060 an API that figures out what the U.V. index is and then it will write some code. 143 00:10:26,200 --> 00:10:27,000 You know whatever. 144 00:10:27,010 --> 00:10:31,750 I don't know what the Ubi index how that works what the scale is but whenever it reaches a certain number 145 00:10:32,110 --> 00:10:40,510 then it will send you an alert receive notification to turn off I find save battery power when you leave 146 00:10:40,510 --> 00:10:43,920 a specific location so you can do all sorts things connect. 147 00:10:43,930 --> 00:10:46,600 You know if this can do that. 148 00:10:46,660 --> 00:10:46,960 All right. 149 00:10:46,960 --> 00:10:48,680 So that all relies on API. 150 00:10:48,880 --> 00:10:55,620 And they support 300 plus AP guys but there are way more API is out there and a great place to see that 151 00:10:56,320 --> 00:11:02,770 is a tool or a site called programmable web and it's a API directory is how they build themselves. 152 00:11:02,770 --> 00:11:05,350 They have 15000 API. 153 00:11:05,530 --> 00:11:06,810 There are more out there. 154 00:11:06,820 --> 00:11:08,360 This is a great place to start. 155 00:11:08,590 --> 00:11:18,220 So if I know I want to use transportation data lets say I want to make an app that will tell you when 156 00:11:18,220 --> 00:11:25,540 the next train is in San Francisco using your current location or will tell you with the latest train 157 00:11:25,540 --> 00:11:29,890 you can take to still make it to work before your first meeting is something like that I would need 158 00:11:29,890 --> 00:11:35,950 an API to figure out when the trains are so I could cook click on transportation here I could do a search 159 00:11:36,250 --> 00:11:45,010 and there's all these different API cers at Yahoo traffic there's a bus Lufthansa for airlines or Indian 160 00:11:45,010 --> 00:11:46,000 Railways. 161 00:11:46,060 --> 00:11:49,940 So this is kind of all over the place you could narrow it down of course. 162 00:11:50,360 --> 00:11:57,280 Or you could look for weather if needed weather data and there's all these API eyes you can click on 163 00:11:57,280 --> 00:12:00,700 one like let's go. 164 00:12:00,830 --> 00:12:07,760 That was interesting climbing weather provides weather data for climbing sites and then I can see you 165 00:12:07,830 --> 00:12:10,120 Oreille for their home page. 166 00:12:10,150 --> 00:12:12,580 Sometimes for sample code. 167 00:12:12,580 --> 00:12:14,650 Not always. 168 00:12:14,650 --> 00:12:16,130 In this case there isn't. 169 00:12:16,160 --> 00:12:23,560 I can see the sites they support the climbing sites and then I can also see an endpoint that will show 170 00:12:23,560 --> 00:12:24,210 you. 171 00:12:24,310 --> 00:12:29,550 Basically this is the site where you can go learn about how the API works. 172 00:12:29,560 --> 00:12:34,420 So we're going to see this in just a moment with the API as we incorporate but this will tell you the 173 00:12:34,420 --> 00:12:39,400 documentation what the data looks like that you'll get back where you're supposed to make a request 174 00:12:39,400 --> 00:12:42,010 to to find certain data. 175 00:12:42,280 --> 00:12:44,040 So that's all I want to show though. 176 00:12:44,180 --> 00:12:49,600 Mainly programmable Web site directory for lots of API is some amazing things on here. 177 00:12:49,840 --> 00:12:58,480 Some sort of obscure things API is to detect nudity and images and then more common things like you 178 00:12:58,480 --> 00:13:07,010 know restaurants and bars and location guides National Park data linked in data maps Facebook you know 179 00:13:07,240 --> 00:13:09,140 lots and lots of things on here. 180 00:13:09,310 --> 00:13:10,830 So great resource. 181 00:13:10,930 --> 00:13:13,500 Also fun just to browse some things they have on here. 182 00:13:13,510 --> 00:13:17,360 If you ever you know a lot of times I would give students a project. 183 00:13:17,710 --> 00:13:22,060 And some people would know immediately they want to use a certain API and then some people weren't inspired 184 00:13:22,060 --> 00:13:23,090 and they needed help. 185 00:13:23,140 --> 00:13:28,280 They wanted inspiration and they just go browse until they find an API that excites them. 186 00:13:28,570 --> 00:13:30,250 Often on programs what Web. 187 00:13:30,640 --> 00:13:30,980 OK. 188 00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:38,000 So one last thing here that I just think is cool is that Tesla Tesla cars and motor cars the electric 189 00:13:37,990 --> 00:13:40,630 car maker has an API. 190 00:13:40,630 --> 00:13:45,850 I think it's unofficial that they don't support it because essentially But there's an API that you can 191 00:13:45,860 --> 00:13:53,620 use to interact with their cars so you can view the documentation here of things you can do. 192 00:13:53,620 --> 00:13:59,960 You can query a car for how charged it is what percentage of the battery is charged how much. 193 00:13:59,980 --> 00:14:01,520 Estimated range. 194 00:14:01,720 --> 00:14:03,420 And this is what you get back. 195 00:14:03,460 --> 00:14:09,820 So when you make a request to this you are l and you have to put in your vehicle ID and I don't have 196 00:14:09,820 --> 00:14:11,090 a test I won't do that. 197 00:14:11,200 --> 00:14:16,510 But if you did you could put it in there and plug it in the red and it would give you this information 198 00:14:16,540 --> 00:14:16,940 . 199 00:14:17,140 --> 00:14:22,750 But you can also do things like ask for the current climate settings temperature inside temperature 200 00:14:22,750 --> 00:14:30,180 outside and then you can do really fun things like wake the car up or open the charging port on the 201 00:14:30,190 --> 00:14:31,600 side. 202 00:14:31,810 --> 00:14:38,900 Start the charging stop charging flash the lights honk the horn so you can write code that will and 203 00:14:38,940 --> 00:14:43,960 there's videos of people who do this they'll have when their alarm goes off in the morning. 204 00:14:43,960 --> 00:14:49,350 Code will automatically check the weather outside and then appropriately set the Tesla. 205 00:14:49,410 --> 00:14:54,460 Well turn the Tesla on first set it to temperature inside to an appropriate temperature depending on 206 00:14:54,520 --> 00:15:00,600 how hot or cold just outside then it will honk the horn and start some music that will you know wakeup 207 00:15:00,620 --> 00:15:01,650 music or something. 208 00:15:01,750 --> 00:15:06,100 And there's videos of this online and you can do that because of the API. 209 00:15:06,350 --> 00:15:12,010 So that's an example of you know the Internet of Things where there is a physical object a thing that 210 00:15:12,010 --> 00:15:14,590 is being controlled through an API. 211 00:15:15,220 --> 00:15:16,020 OK. 212 00:15:16,480 --> 00:15:18,030 So we covered a lot there. 213 00:15:18,220 --> 00:15:26,560 Some of API application programming interface ways for you to write code that interacts with other code 214 00:15:26,650 --> 00:15:28,270 other pieces of data. 215 00:15:28,270 --> 00:15:35,260 Application services typically web API is what most people refer to which our API set are structured 216 00:15:35,260 --> 00:15:41,890 in a way that you interact with them through the web usually through HTP requests.