Reading Data from an API

Fundamentally, an API or Application Programming Interface is an interface to a computing resource (for example, an operating system or database table), which has a set of exposed methods (function calls) that allow a programmer to access particular data or internal features of that resource.

A web API is, as the name suggests, an API over the web. Note that it is not a specific technology or programming framework, but an architectural concept. Think of an API like a fast-food restaurant's customer service desk. Internally, there are many food items, raw materials, cooking resources, and recipe management systems, but all you see are fixed menu items on the board and you can only interact through those items. It is like a port that can be accessed using an HTTP protocol and that's able to deliver data and services if used properly.

Web APIs are extremely popular these days for all kinds of data services. In the very first chapter, we talked...