lab_04.md

Lab 4

Objective: Better understand APIs by building one

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The task

You will build an API using Flask. Example APIs:

• OpenFEC
• Socrata Open Data Consumer API (SODA)

We will be practicing pair programming and documentation-driven development. You'll get as far as you can during the Lab session, then continue the rest outside.

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Steps

Setup

1. Pair up with someone who isn't on your project team.
   • This will be known as your "Lab group". Subsequent Labs will use the same people, repository, and dataset.
2. Pick a dataset that has unique identifiers for each row.
   • You can use a dataset from one of your projects, or pick a different one.
   • You'll use a CSV as the data source to power your API.
   • Don't spend too long on this step.
3. Create a public repository in the advanced-computing organization.
   • Call it something like [name1]-[name2]-api.
   • Make sure to grant collaborator access to your partner.
4. Create a README that will describe how to use your forthcoming API.

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Build

For each step, you will:

1. Document the functionality. Include:
   • Options, if applicable
   • Sample output
2. Build it.
3. Test it.

The documentation is a starting place; you can add/modify as you go.

For inspiration, check out the example.

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Suggested order

Allow the user to:

1. List records
   • You can start with CSV or JSON output; you will implement the other later.
   • Hints

     • See to_csv() and to_json().
     • "If [the path is] None, the result is returned as a string."
2. Filter the data based on a particular column, such as age=30
3. Specify a limit and offset
4. Retrieve a single record by identifier
5. Specify the output format (CSV or JSON)

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