Working with APIs in Python

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Working with APIs in Python

Python allows easy interaction with APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to fetch, send, or update data from web services.

1. Installing Required Library

• Most API interactions use the requests library:

pip install requests

import requests

2. Making GET Requests

• Retrieve data from an API endpoint.

url = "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1"
response = requests.get(url)

# Check status
print(response.status_code)  # 200 = success

# Get response as JSON
data = response.json()
print(data)

3. Making POST Requests

• Send data to an API endpoint.

url = "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts"
payload = {
    "title": "foo",
    "body": "bar",
    "userId": 1
}

response = requests.post(url, json=payload)
print(response.status_code)
print(response.json())

4. Handling Headers and Authentication

url = "https://api.example.com/data"
headers = {
    "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
print(response.json())

5. Query Parameters

url = "https://api.example.com/search"
params = {"q": "Python", "limit": 5}

response = requests.get(url, params=params)
print(response.json())

6. Error Handling

try:
    response = requests.get(url, timeout=5)
    response.raise_for_status()  # Raises HTTPError for bad responses
    data = response.json()
except requests.exceptions.HTTPError as errh:
    print("HTTP Error:", errh)
except requests.exceptions.ConnectionError as errc:
    print("Connection Error:", errc)
except requests.exceptions.Timeout as errt:
    print("Timeout Error:", errt)
except requests.exceptions.RequestException as err:
    print("Error:", err)

7. Working with JSON Data

# Access JSON fields
print(data['title'])

# Loop through list of items
for item in data:
    print(item['id'], item['title'])

8. Key Points

• GET: Retrieve data from an API.

• POST: Send data to an API.

• Headers: Required for authentication and content-type.

• Params: Pass query parameters for filtering or search.

• Error handling: Always handle connection and HTTP errors.

• JSON: Most APIs return data in JSON format; Python dictionaries can be used to parse it.