Introduction to the Course

Get an overview of the course, its intended audience, and prerequisites.

We'll cover the following

What is an API?

An API is a software gateway that allows different software components to communicate with each other. An API 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 GitHub that provides repository management. Building and exposing an API for this service will allow others to programmatically fetch the data this service offers, such as integrating GitHub operations in your own app.

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API workflow
API workflow

What is a REST API?

APIs provide an interface to connect different endpoints of one or multiple software. Therefore, the API that helps us interact with the features of GitHub is called the GitHub REST API. REST (Representational State Transfer) is a standard architecture to share information across the internet. Clients request the data from an interface. This data is converted into an object by the REST API and sent to the requested interface as a request. This request is entertained, and data is delivered back as a response to the client.

Prerequisites

This course requires a basic understanding of APIs and some fundamental knowledge of JavaScript. This course requires the learner to have a beginner-level understanding of the following:

  • APIs

  • GitHub

  • React

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Intended audience

This course is intended for any learner who wants to explore the GitHub API. The learner can be any of the following:

  • A developer who wants to explore GitHub API.

  • A professional who wants to manage the processes from creating repositories to merging the content for the final release.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, you’ll be able to do the following:

  • Use GitHub API to create, list, update, and delete repositories on GitHub.

  • Use GitHub API to create, list, rename, and merge branches on GitHub.

  • Integrate GitHub in your apps to search, deploy, or release code on GitHub.