Imagine you run a cafe website.

You want to show the best-selling coffee of the day.

The data changes every day based on the sales.

You need to grab that data from the database.

But you can't pull the data directly.

Why?

Because it’s insecure.

So, we need a middleman called an API.

You send a request to the API.

The API scans the request to ensure it’s safe

Then it talks to the database

and brings you the data you want.

But how should the request and response look?

We need some kind of guidelines.

That guideline is called Rest API.

The guidelines include

Sounds complicated?

Don't worry, we are not going through that.

In practice, it looks something like this.

First, you send a request.

It falls into one of these four categories.

Which action should you use to get the best-selling coffee?

READ.

Each action maps to an HTTP method.

We are going to send a GET request.

But where should we send it?

The server, right?

But a server has many types of data, like the best-selling dish, the menu, and other stuff.

How does it organize them?

By using URIs (endpoints).

They look like this.

Each of them returns different data.

You send your GET request to the right endpoint.

The server queries the database and returns the data, which is usually in JSON.

You get what you want.

But wait.

One last thing.

The request isn't always successful.

So, the server needs to tell the client if the request worked or not.

It does that by using a status code.

200-level status code means success.

400 means you messed up.

And 500 means the server messed up.

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