Create a Simple RESTful API in Five minutes

Before getting started let’s understand what an API means, As you all might know API stands for Application Programming Interface. Wait, What’s that..?

Let’s take a look at the Wikipedia-level definition — An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, that offers a service to other pieces of software.

Didn’t understand much? Don’t worry! Here’s the simplified version of the above definition — An API is a medium through which two computer programs can “talk”. Here, “talk” refers to the exchanging of data.

There are a plethora of APIs in the world. Today we will be talking about RESTful APIs.

We will be creating a RESTful API. A RESTful API is one of the many possible ways that programs, servers, and websites can share data. A RESTful API organizes data into a bunch of unique URLs( URIs ). The data can be anything (eg. form-data, weather data, product details) pretty much any meaningful data.

Let’s take a look at an example for better understanding:-

The above URL ( API endpoint ) gets the data of all the burgers. If sandwiches are also available at the store, then by changing the endpoint we can get desired results.

Now you should have a good understanding of what RESTful APIs are. I am so thrilled to have you reached here.

Yay! Now let’s start coding. 🚀

We will build our REST API in Python using FAST API⚡. FastAPI is a modern Web framework for developing RESTful APIs in Python.

Requirements:-

• Python 3.6+
• Text Editor(VScode) or PyCharm
• JSON Formatter extension — Chrome

I am using PyCharm. You can use any Text editor or IDE of your preference.

1. Installing FAST API and Uvicorn:-

Create a New Project.

As I said earlier we will be using the FAST API web framework for building API. So let’s install it in our project using the following command:

pip install fastapi

After it is installed, we need to install Uvicorn — A web server implementation for python.

pip install uvicorn

2. Create and Initialize file:-

Create a new file api.py in your project. Include the following code to initialize the file.

from fastapi import FastAPI

# creating API
app = FastAPI()

3. Creating menu routes:-

Now that we have initialized the API we need to create routes. We will be creating 3 routes.

1. Default route
2. Burgers route
3. Sandwiches route

# default route
@app.get("/")
async def root():
 return {
 "welcome_message": "Hello hungry Zucky, welcome!",
 "menu": [
 {
 "burgers": "http://localhost:8000/api/v1/menu/burgers"
 },
 {
 "sandwiches": "http://localhost:8000/api/v1/menu/sandwiches"
 }
 ]
 };

# burgers route
@app.get("/api/v1/menu/burgers")
async def burgers():
 return {
 "spicy burger": "10$",
 "cheesy burger": "12$",
 "Extra cheesy spicy burger": "18$"
 }

# sandwiches route
@app.get("/api/v1/menu/sandwiches")
async def burgers():
 return {
 "Egg sandwich": "10$",
 "cheesy sandwich": "11$",
 "Chicken sandwich": "13$"
 }

Congrats, Your REST API is created.

4. Spinning up server🚀

Finally, our REST API is created. To check out the results enter the following command.

uvicorn api:app --reload

This command starts the server. With the usage of --reload flag, the server restarts when it observes any new changes in your file i.e api.py

Enter the URL in your browser:- http://127.0.0.1:8000

Conclusion:-

In this article, we created a simple REST API in Python using the FAST API web framework. It has three routes and each route returns JSON data. Further, We can send the JSON data to a front-end as an HTTP response.

I hope this gives you a good understanding of what APIs are and how a REST API is created in Python.

Happy coding!😁

- csg33k