If you are in tech, then you may have heard this popular term called "API". Some people use APIs for fun, some for money and some for their applications. There are ways you can use APIs. In this blog, let's learn what exactly is an API, how you can build your own API and how you can monetize your API. n What is an API? I am taking a popular example to explain this. Imagine you go to a restaurant to eat some food. Now you don't directly go to the kitchen and cook yourself and then eat it, right 😂? (Of course, they don't allow you to do so). You call a waiter and order your food. Then the waiter goes to the kitchen and brings your food. Here you can compare API with the waiter. So, API is an intermediary between two applications and makes it possible for those two applications to communicate with each other. If we put this in our example, one application is you the customer, another application is the restaurant kitchen where the food is prepared and the waiter is an API who acts as an intermediary between you and the kitchen. Why do we need APIs? Imagine you have data and you want to share that data to allow developers to build software with your data. Now you need some sort of way you can make this possible. That's where APIs can help you. You can build an API to share your data and other resources so that developers can use your API to build services or software. Let's understand this with an example; Let's say you are building an app that suggests the vehicle take the route with less traffic. For this, you need traffic data of different routes so that you can train a machine learning model and build your app. It's not an easy task to count the number of vehicles travelling on different routes and prepare data. So what you can do is, use a 3rd party service that provides their data with APIs. How to build an API? Another thing you need to know about API is not just about data, it can be a set of functions, objects, and commands. For example, provides various functions, objects etc to use in your applications to interact with the browser. browser API Before building our own API let's use an API. We will be using a . JokeAPI Before that let's learn some terms of API: - An endpoint is an API server URL where you can access all the different resources that API provides. Endpoints are actions like , , , etc.., which you can perform on different routes.
For example, Endpoint GET POST DELETE - is an API endpoint GET https://api.github.com/ - is another endpoint POST https://api.github.com/user and so on... - Paths are different URLs of an API. Paths For example: - is a path/route https://api.github.com/user - All the paths are pre-defined in the API server. If you have a path that can't be pre-defined in the server, then you can use parameters. Parameters are key-value pairs and start after from the end of a path. Parameter ? For example, - here is a parameter.
If you have more than one parameter, then you can append them by adding after each parameter. https://api.github.com/user?userId=12335235235 userId & For example, https://api.github.com/user?userId=12335235235&api_key=yu67432ffu6f2t446 Let's use an API Open a new browser tab, paste this URL and see, https://v2.jokeapi.dev/joke/Any You will receive something like this, This is called a "response" you got from JokeAPI for your request. And the format of the response is "JSON". is a popular output format for APIs. JSON If you visit JokeAPI , you can try out different categories and filters. documentation In the above options, each category is a different route/path, like https://v2.jokeapi.dev/joke/Programming https://v2.jokeapi.dev/joke/Miscellaneous https://v2.jokeapi.dev/joke/Dark and all the options below category can be appended as parameters, like https://v2.jokeapi.dev/joke/Programming?blacklistFlags=nsfw&type=twopart&amount=2 Let's try to tweak the options, After tweaking the options, copy the URL and paste it into the browser, Now you will get a response with all the filters applied. Let's build our own API You can build two types of APIs: Software - As mentioned somewhere above a software API is just a set of functions, objects and commands, it doesn't require a database. For example, , , etc. jQuery API Browser API API service - An API service gives people access to their data through API. For example, , , , etc. JokeAPi The Movie Database Open Weather API Let's build an API service to add, delete, edit and get your daily tasks. We need a database and a server to create an API service. Let's use MongoDB as our database and NodeJs, and ExpressJs for creating a server. Open your IDE or code editor. Create a folder and name it something like . todo-api Before we start make sure you have these dev tools installed, NodeJs MongoDB Initialize with, npm npm init Install , , and packages as we use them for the project. express mongoose axios npm i express mongoose axios Install as a dev dependency. (Nodemon restarts the server every time we make changes to the code so that we don't need to manually restart) nodemon npm i nodemon --save-dev Add a script to start the server with nodemon. todo-api/package.json "scripts": {
   ...
   "dev": "nodemon server.js"
   ...
}, Next, create a file called in the root and paste this boilerplate code. server.js (Snippet) todo-api/server.js const express = require("express");
const mongoose = require("mongoose");

const app = express();
const PORT = process.env.PORT || 5000;
const MONGODB_URI = process.env.MONGODB_URI || "mongodb://localhost/todoapiDB";

app.use(express.json());

mongoose
  .connect(MONGODB_URI, { useNewUrlParser: true })
  .then(() => {
    app.listen(PORT, console.log("Server stated on port 5000"));
  })
  .catch((err) => {
    console.log(err);
  }); Now, start the server with this command, npm run dev Visit in your browser and see the response. http://localhost:5000/ You should see this in your browser. What it is telling you is there is no endpoint like defined in the server. GET http://localhost:5000/ So let's add an endpoint. As we are using expressjs we can register a route like this. (Snippet) todo-api/server.js app.get("/", (req, res) => {
  res.send("Hello World!");
}); Now visit the URL again and you will see the response. So this is a simple "GET" request we created on our server. Next, create a simple model in our database to store our tasks. (Snippet) todo-api/models/tasks.model.js const mongoose = require("mongoose");

const Schema = mongoose.Schema;

const taskSchema = new Schema({
  name: {
    type: String,
    required: true,
  },
});

module.exports = mongoose.model("Task", taskSchema); and require the model in server.js (Snippet) todo-api/server.js const Task = require("./models/tasks.model"); Before we move further, it's not possible to do everything from the browser so let's use an API tool called "Postman". Download it from (Free). here After downloading, test it by entering the URL and clicking . http://localhost:5000/ Send Now define a route that gets all the tasks. (Snippet) todo-api/server.js // GET http://localhost:5000/getTasks

app.get("/getTasks", async (req, res) => {
  try {
    const response = await Task.find();
    res.json(response);
  } catch (err) {
    res.json({ message: err });
  }
}); If you test this now you will get an empty response as we have not added any tasks to our database. So let's create a route to add tasks to our database. To send data in our request we need to make a "POST" request. (Snippet) todo-api/server.js // POST http://localhost:5000/postTask

app.post("/postTask", async (req, res) => {
  try {
    const response = await Task.create(req.body);
    res.json(response);
  } catch (err) {
    res.json({ message: err });
  }
}); Now in postman change the request to . Then go to the tab and select -> from dropdown. GET POST Body raw JSON Write a JSON object in the body field and make a request to . POST http://localhost:5000/postTask You will receive a response back containing - the name of the task, - the unique id of the task generated by MongoDB. name _id Add a few more tasks and make a request to , you will see all your tasks. GET http://localhost:5000/ Now let's add a route to delete a task. (Snippet) todo-api/server.js // DELETE http://localhost:5000/deleteTask/:id

app.delete("/deleteTask/:id", async (req, res) => {
  try {
    const response = await Task.remove({ _id: req.params.id });
    res.json(response);
  } catch (err) {
    res.json({ message: err });
  }
}); In the above route is called a . It is used when we can't pre-define a route. You can also use for our case. http://localhost:5000/deleteTask/:id :id Path Variable Query Parameter So, change the request method to in postman and copy one of your tasks id and paste in the path variable value and click . DELETE Send If you now make a request to you won't see the deleted task. That means you successfully deleted the Task. GET /getTasks Now let's edit a task. We all make mistakes so we need an edit button(I Hope Elon Musk adds an edit button to Twitter). To edit data we have to make a request. Let's create a route for that. You can make use request to edit a document. But request is better if we want to edit partial data. PATCH PUT PATCH (Snippet) todo-api/server.js // PATCH http://localhost:5000/editTask/:id

app.patch("/editTask/:id", async (req, res) => {
    try {
        const response = await Task.updateOne({ _id: req.params.id }, { $set: req.body });
        res.json(response);
    } catch (err) {
        res.json({ message: err });
    }
}); Same as the request, add body to your request. Copy the id of the task that you wish to edit and paste it into the path variable value field and click . Now make a request to you will see Task updated. POST PATCH Send GET /getTasks So that's it! We learned 4 important RESTAPI methods while building our small "todo application". Here is the postman collection containing the four requests - Link Here is the GitHub repository for this tutorial - Link How to sell/monetize an API? "Data is the new oil" - a popular quote of the 21st century and it is 100% true. If you have data, then you can make loads of $$$. API is one great way to sell/monetize your data. Let's see how we can monetize our API. To monetize our API, we are going to use RapidAPI is the world's largest API hub where you can explore different APIs, and create and manage your own APIs. Rapid API Before continuing, host your API server somewhere like because you know "localhost" doesn't work outside of your computer :). And replace all with in your postman collection. Heroku http://localhost:5000/ https://yourdomain.com/ Let's start by creating an account if you don't have one already. After creating an account, click on on the top-right. My APIs Click on on the left panel. Add New API Fill in the details for , and . For , select "Postman Collection". And then upload the collection file. API Name Short Description Category Specify using You can download your postman collection by exporting the collection as a JSON file. To do so, open your postman collection, and click three dots -> . Export Export Or you can download the JSON file from this . Make sure to change the domain name. tutorial GitHub repository After uploading the file and clicking . Fill in the details for "Describe <YourAPI> and click on . Add API Save Next, add a base URL. Finally, make your API public, so every on the internet can see your API. If they like it they can subscribe to your API. Let's actually monetize our API by adding Plans & Pricing. So go to the tab. Plans & Pricing Here you can choose different plans and set the number of requests for different plans. Let's add a plan. Choose "Montly Subscription" or "Pay Per Use". Set a price. Choose rate limit - number of requests per second/minute/hour. PRO Explore more on Rapid API . docs That's it! I hope you learned something new from this article. Feel free to ask any questions or doubts or anything in the comments.

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