Epilogue - ue22-p25-backend

A word about authentication¶

To authenticate with a REST API, you must provide proof of who you are with each request. This generally involves associating a token with the request that allows the application to know

Who we are
What we have the right to do on which resources

Authorization: Bearer <token>

Token acquisition is generally done via the Web interface of the targeted service.

⚠️ Attention a token should never be shared 💣️

In most cases a token is associated with:

A set of accessible resources
Rights on these resources (consultation, modification, creation, deletion)
A validity period (token expiration date)

A solution to preserve application tokens is to use a .env file

A usable API is a documented API¶

So to conclude on APIs, it is a very simple way to offer an interface to remote resources and data. The only difficulty in this area is the definition and especially the documentation of APIs 📑. So if you set up a Web service with an API and you want to open your service to the outside, please take the time to document your API.

We find online plenty of open APIs a link to have a non-exhaustive list

https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis
ou
http://bit.ly/3YHC1qX
ou

notably an example of useful API
https://adresse.data.gouv.fr/outils/api-doc/adresse

Illustration¶

Consider for example the case of a server generating lists of random numbers on demand. The API of such a server could be

/api/integer returns a random integer
/api/float returns a random floating number
/api/integer?n=100 returns 100 random integers
...

it happens in the python/api-random folder of the course

For example¶

Here’s how to generate some statistics on Github directly in Markdown

![Basile's GitHub stats](https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api?username=basileMarchand&count_private=true&show_icons=true&theme=dark)
![Basile's top languages](https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api/top-langs/?username=basileMarchand&hide=jupyter%20notebook&langs_count=10&theme=dark&layout=compact)

A word about “No Code”¶

For a few years increasingly fashionable: No Code, Low Code

mail support request that causes a new entry in a database
and a mail notification if “urgent” in the mail subject 🤯

Application 1¶

xxx outdated xxx

I have set up a minimalist server offering an API allowing:

List all users in the database
Update your status
Send a message to a user
Retrieve messages that were sent to me.

🚀 https://mines.bmarchand.fr/api/doc 🚀

The idea is that you perform the following actions:

Using a Python 🐍 program:
1. make a GET request to find what your user ID is
2. make a PATCH request to update your status
3. make GET/POST requests to send messages between you
For the more playful, using the HTML/CSS/JS combo
1. Make the web client of this server 🤗!

Application 2: using the Notion API¶

The objective here is to set up a Python program allowing to modify the content of a Notion database. A skeleton is available here. The application in the end must be able to: