It seems to be possible for anyone to get a list from all edx courses. unfortunately the available documents are looking incomplete.
Is there any way to obtain a course list?
Are you talking about the list of courses running on edx.org? For that, you would need an OAuth key to access that API endpoint, and I don't believe that edx.org currently gives out OAuth keys. That API endpoint is currently intended for internal use only.
If you want to run your own Open edX installation, then you'll be able to access this API endpoint from your own instance, and it will return information about the courses you have running on your own installation.
But you do have an other option, you can use RSS feed from www.edx.org
https://www.edx.org/api/v2/report/course-feed/rss
i found this here
i hope this helps !
The docs do not give the root URI to run your api queries against. Anyone can host an instance of the edX platform, hence the root URI can change. Here is a fully qualified URL for the edX course API:
https://courses.edx.org/api/courses/v1/courses/
Visiting this URL will show the results that an anonymous user would see.
After some soulfull searching i found one of the most pretty API docs i have ever seen. all that you need to know about pulling course content.
https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/course-catalog-api-guide/latest/course-catalog-api-guide.pdf
Looks like they have one now!
I too was looking for an EdX api that would hopefully include access to a current courses catalogue and also include all course descriptions.
Not sure when it was released but this looks like a good direction for me - http://edx.readthedocs.io/projects/edx-platform-api/en/latest/courses/overview.html
Hope this is helpful.
Related
I have read a few articles about HATEOAS and the way that API should be implemented such that you can traverse to different states by following the links. But I'm confused as to how the client should be implemented?
From this answer:
The client knows nothing about how the server designs its URIs other
than what it can find out at runtime.
Does the client need to crawl from the root node down to a nested resource to just make a POST if it doesn't know the direct URI?
What would be the purpose of API documentation then?
For implementing HATEOAS server needs to include links to responses that goes from server to client, and client uses these links in response to communicate to server.
For eg. Client request Product list, server will respond with list of products with link to Add, edit and delete the products (if user is able to do that), which will then be transformed in client into links or buttons like Edit Product, Delete Product.
This blog might help you get more understanding.
Does the client need to crawl from the root node down to a nested resource to just make a POST if it doesn't know the direct URI?
Yes unless the root page does not contain the link which describes the POST.
What would be the purpose of API documentation then?
It describes the metadata the client can recognize for example by a link or by a property. So it describes the capabilities of the service.
To answer your first question "Does the client need to crawl from the root node down to a nested resource to just make a POST if it doesn't know the direct URI?"
The answer is No. The client always does not have to crawl from the root node. It is possible to design the URI;s such a way that the navigation to reach the direct URI can be from other views. For example if the purpose of the URI (/Products/product1/Delete) is to delete product , then it should be possible to reach this by either crawling from the /Products or by giving a namespace query of Products/Deleteview. This "DeleteView" URI should give all the URI's of the delete view. i.e it can return a uri collection like Products/product1/Delete, Products/product2/Delete etc.
To your second Question "What would be the purpose of API documentation then?"
Concept of API is a legacy of the past. Ideally the URI itself should be the documentation. This way the client can be programmed to discover and take only things that it can respond to.
We got hold of unique technology which manages these namespaces. so we are shielded from this view manipulation ourselves. I recommend using a technology to manipulate and create these URI namespaces.
Here is an excerpt from an assignment I am currently doing:
Build a dummy app that:
Contains a REST API that operates over a single resource.
Contains a Backbone client that consumes that API and can list, show, create, update, and remove that resource.
My understanding was that the term "consume" implies total coverage of the API's exposed ressources. However, the assignment says "consumes that API and can [CRUD] that resource".
Is that sentence redundant or is my understanding of the term wrong?
(Bonus question: why searching Google for this question returns countless language-specific tutorials for "consuming an API" but none explain what the term actually means?).
To consume an API means to basically use any part of it from your application.
Consuming an API here means creating a client which can send requests to the API that you build.
It appears that you need to create and API which can handle Create, retrieve, update and delete (CRUD) of a resource. For instance if your REST api is to create a blog, your API should handle CRUD functions for the object/resource blogpost.
POST - Create a blog post
GET - Retrieve a blog post
PUT - Update a blog post
DELETE - Delete a blog post.
It is about the direction of the app's interaction with API - it either provides an API, or consumes it, so there are providers and consumers of API, and this is just a less general and ambiguous term than 'using'.
Simply consuming an API means using it in your application.
For, e.g., GET request to https://someapi/Users will give you all the users.
You need to request this URL https://someapi/Users to get all the users and then you can use it into your application.
I always think about Albert Einstein's quote of "If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself." when someone asks a question that you might take for granted due to technical experience you have on a subject.
I think the following medium.com article does an excellent job explaining it: How do you explain API to a 5-year-old?
simply means : using the API.
You can do it with HTTP method (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE..) using something like Postman (Tool) or maybe you have a client app/library that calls these methods implicitly.
https://angel.co/api/spec/startups
What would the best approach for hitting every company that is listed on AngelList? My first guess would be to query all the numbers up until 250k, the number of companies on angelList, using this endpoint https://api.angel.co/1/startups/45435
There surely has to be a better way of doing this though.
Yes it is possible via their API. And the API endpoint that you have mentioned in your question is the correct one. I have written a PHP component to achieve this. You can use this exporter application to download the start-ups data for each country into a CSV file : AngelList Data Exporter
I hope this helps you.
Angel.co does not expose its api anymore. So you have to parse the website to get any data.
Also a quick google search would give you a few websites which have different datasets from angel.co website.
Lets consider the following flow to a RESTfull API:
API root
|
v
user list
|
v
user details
|
v
user messages
Suppose I have a client to consume the API, and I want to retrieve messages from a user with ID 42.
From what I've been studying, my client is not supposed to know how to "build" urls, and it should follow the links given by the API.
How should I do to retrieve messages for the user with ID 42?
The only way I can think is "walk" the whole API from it's root to user messages, which doesn't look very pretty or efficient to me.
Eg:
1 - GET / and get the link to the list of users
2 - GET /user/?id=42 and get the link to details of the user with the ID 42
3 - GET /user/42/ and get the link to user 42 list of messages
4 - GET /user/42/messages/ and finally get the user messages
Did I get something wrong? Is this the right way according to Roy's Fielding paper?
Or is it ok to just assume the messages url is "/user/{id}/messages/" and make the request directly?
Use URL templates in your API root. Let the client consume the API root at runtime. It should look for a URL template named something like "user-messages" with the value of "/user/{userid}/messages/". Then let the client substitute "42" for "{userid}" in the template and do a GET on the resulting URL. You can add as many of these URL templates you want for all of the required, often used, use cases.
The difference between this solution and a "classic" web API is the late binding of URLs: the client reads the API root with its templates at runtime - as opposed to compiling the client with the knowledge of the URL templates.
Take a look at the HAL media type for some information about URL templates: http://stateless.co/hal_specification.html
I wrote this piece here some time ago to explain the benefits of hypermedia: http://soabits.blogspot.dk/2013/12/selling-benefits-of-hypermedia.html
I believe what your real concern is should you go about implementing HATEOAS or not. Now as it's an integral part of REST specifications, it is recommended that each entity should have a link to it's child entity that it encompasses. In your case, API ROOT should show list of users with each "user" having a link (/root/users/{id}) to corresponding user's details. And each User details entity will contain a link to the list of "messages" (/root/users/{id}/messages) which, finally, inturn encompass the link to the actual message detail as well (/root/users/{id}/messages/{messageId}). This concept is extremely useful (and thus a part of the specifications) because the client doesn't need to know the url to where your entity is exposed. For example, if your users were on http://users.abc.com/rest/users/{id} but your messages were on http://messages.abc.com/rest/{userId}/messages/{messageId}, the user entity that encompasses the list of "messages" will already have link embedded to point to the right resource on a different server.
Now that being said, I haven't actually seen many REST implementations out there (I must admit I do not have TOO MUCH of an experience, but enough to give an opinion) where HATEOAS is being used widespread. In most cases the resources are almost always on the same server (environment) and the paths to resources are almost always relative to the root url.Thus, it doesn't make sense for the clients to parse out the embedded links from the object when they can generate one by themselves, especially when the client would like to provide access to a resource directly (View the message directly without getting the user entity provided you already know what the messageId is).
In the end, it all depends on how close do you want your REST implementations to that of specifications and what kind of clients are you going to have. My 2 cents would be: if you have time, implement REST with HATEOAS and feel proud about it :). There are libraries out there that will make this implementation (HATEOAS) somewhat transparent to you REST implementation (I believe spring has one, although not very mature. You can look at it here). If you are like me and don't have much time to go that route, I think you can continue with a normal REST implementation without HATEOAS and your clients will still be OK with it (or so I hope!)
Hope this helps!
I found this article about hacking urls: Avoid hackable URLs.
There is a very interesting discussion about the topic of this question in the comments section.
I would like to know if there is some best practices about the root endpoint for a REST web service? I mean, should it be a short documentation about the usage of the API itself? Should it be an XML document describing all methods available? Should it only return "unknown method"?
The question is perfectly clear to me.
I think it should respond with 404. If there is no resource associated with the root path, then there is nothing to return.
If you feel that 404 is not helpful, then it would also be OK to return the URL of the documentation.
REST is supposed to be self describing so having the root show an error is poor design in my opinion.
I like the root to contain information that allows you to navigate the rest of the API.
So for example the root might contain a link to a list of product categories from which the API user can select a category and then a list of products etc.
A self describing API means less documentation to write and keep updated!!
NerdDinner.com1
The Sun Cloud API
Twitter
Paul Jame's article
MediaWiki's API2
1. NerdDinner uses WCF Data Services, which is a great way to correctly implement RESTful services. The reason I am point to that, and not WCF data services directly is because it is a public website and you can use it.
2. MediaWiki is not a great example because they are passing actions in the URI but it is technically a RESTful service and show's a lot of interesting ideas.
This question as asked is unclear. I would guess it means something like a directory that all API methods are under. For example, the root directory of the Flickr API would be http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/.
For an example of a project that accesses the Flickr API, see python-flickrapi
the rootend point of REST API is the the API defined for the first slash i.e "/" of the url after the dispatcher-servlet. It contains all the GET for the list of resources (mostly the get for all the database tables) this list further contains all the items and in single item there will be DELETE , PUT/PATCH and SELF get URL. Thus making the implementation of HATEOS.
For me, I just redirect to my frontend.
In node JS, use res.redirect("https://<<your frontend>>");