Introduction to the Course
Explore the basics of Dropbox as a cloud storage platform and understand what an API is and how it enables programmatic access. This lesson helps you get familiar with the Dropbox API, key objects, and the initial steps to start using its endpoints in your JavaScript projects. You will gain foundational knowledge needed to manipulate files and folders via the API effectively.
We'll cover the following...
Overview
Dropbox is a cloud-based file storage platform that is available worldwide. It helps users store and save documents, files, or pictures to the cloud, which can be shared with others as needed.
What is an API?
An API is a software gateway that allows different software components to communicate with each other. It helps expose the capabilities of an application to the outer world, allowing for programmatic access to the application’s data.
Consider the case of a service like Dropbox that provides cloud-based storage. Building and exposing an API for this service will allow others to programmatically fetch the data this service offers, such as remote file management. Many popular services like YouTube, Reddit, and Google Maps also provide APIs for extended use cases. These services allow authorized clients to access the resources provided by them.
Prerequisites
In this course, we’ll explore different endpoints of the Dropbox API. We’ll make calls to the endpoints using HTTP requests and the JavaScript programming language. Therefore, the requirements to take this course include:
- A basic understanding of APIs.
- A basic understanding of HTTP requests.
- The fundamentals of Node.js and React.
Intended audience
This API course is helpful for the following audiences:
- Any individual who wants to learn how to programmatically manipulate files and folders on Dropbox.
- Students who satisfy the prerequisites and want to learn about interesting APIs.
- Professionals that have experience with APIs and want to utilize services provided by the Dropbox API.