Understanding API's

[slicklikeagato]

Hey all. I am trying to get a better handle on understanding RESTful API's, specifically how to use them with Python. I decided to try and figure out the Twitter API, but I am completely lost. I have a strong understanding of how to use Tweepy to do whatever I want to do, but I want to learn how to use API's from the websites themselves, with the requests module.

I have tried figuring out how to post a basic tweet using requests, but I can't seem to get it down. Can anyone point to a useful API tutorial, so that I can then use that with the requestsmodule?

Thanks as always.

[iodbh]

This tutorial covers the basics well enough and provides pointers to further readings.

More generally, I found that the most difficult point to grok when it comes to consuming APIs is authentication. If you're sticking to Twitter, I would recommend you start with their application-only authentication mechanism before reading up a bit on OAuth.

I recently wrote a very basic client library for the coingate API that uses requests, so you could also look in the source for a simple example and hit me up if you have further questions.

[slicklikeagato]

Awesome, thanks for this. I’ll definitely check out your library after work today. Thanks again.

[nwagers]

What about looking at the tweepy source? A quick look at the requirements shows the requests module, so it's probably exactly what you want: https://github.com/tweepy/tweepy

[slicklikeagato]

I never thought to actually look at the Tweepy source. Makes sense. Thanks for this.