Introduction to the Course

Get an overview of the course and its prerequisites.

We'll cover the following

Overview

Vimeo started as a side project by two web developers to tag and share short videos. The name Vimeo originated from the combination of the words "video" and "me". Its business model is based on SaaS (Software as a Service). Vimeo provides tools to host, share, and create videos with a focus on delivering high-definition content to a range of devices. It also offers tools that let us create content, edit videos, broadcast, and more.

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 its data.

Consider the case of an application service like Vimeo that provides management and manipulation of categories, channels, videos, groups, and more. Building and exposing an API for this service will allow others to programmatically fetch the data this service offers, such as fetching videos from the Vimeo platform and rendering them in your application.

Vimeo vs. YouTube

Let's see a brief comparison between Vimeo and YouTube in the table below:

Vimeo

YouTube

Vimeo has a community of mature individuals who provide productive and useful feedback.

YouTube has a large community of mixed users compared to Vimeo, and their feedback isn’t always useful.

Vimeo offers free and paid tiers.

YouTube offers a free version with ads and an ad-free paid version.

Vimeo offers to protect your video via a password.

YouTube doesn’t have a password protection option.

Prerequisites

In this course, we'll explore different endpoints of the Vimeo API. We'll make calls to the endpoints using HTTP requests in the JavaScript programming language. Therefore, below are the requirements to take this course:

  1. A basic understanding of APIs.

  2. A basic understanding of HTTP requests.

  3. Fundamentals of JavaScript programming language and React library.

Intended audience

This API course could be for the following people:

  • A student with a basic knowledge of HTTP requests who wants to learn about APIs.

  • Developers who want to explore and integrate the Vimeo API.

  • A professional who has ample experience working with other APIs and wants to explore the Vimeo API.