Introduction to the Course
Get an overview of the course and its intended audience, prerequisites, and learning objectives.
We'll cover the following
The REST Countries API benefits many software applications that rely on a country’s information or metadata. Most product registration forms need clients to submit their country name, country code, and other essential information. Furthermore, specific shipping-related softwares require country codes to speed up the shipments. It’s helpful if these softwares can rapidly retrieve the necessary data. Another use case is for travel companies that inform travel planners about the demography, currency, or time zone of a country to help them plan their trip.
What is an API?
An API is a software gateway that allows different software components to communicate with each other. It helps expose the capabilities of an application to the outer world, allowing for programmatic access to the application’s data.
Consider the case of a service that provides information about countries. Building and exposing an API for this service will allow others to programmatically fetch the data this service offers, such as names, demographics, languages, and currencies of different countries.
Many popular services like YouTube, Reddit, and Google Maps also provide APIs for extended use cases. These services allow authorized clients to access the resources provided by them.
Prerequisites
In this course, we’ll explore different endpoints of the REST Countries API. We’ll make calls to the endpoints using HTTP requests and the JavaScript programming language. The requirements to take this course are as follows:
- A basic understanding of APIs
- A basic understanding of HTTP requests
- Fundamentals of Node.js and React
Intended audience
This API course is helpful for the following audiences:
- Any individual who wants to learn how to create an application that requires information about different countries
- Professionals that have experience with APIs and want to utilize the services provided by the REST Countries API
- Students who want to learn about interesting APIs
