#100DaysOfCode in Python Transcripts
Chapter: Days 97-99: Building JSON APIs
Lecture: Defining the API methods in Flask
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Now, we're going to do something that makes
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my skin crawl a little bit.
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We're going to write a ton of code into this one,
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ginormous, what's going to become
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a ginormous single file web app, yuk.
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Afterwards, I'll refactor it in a way
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that I think is much cleaner and simpler.
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If you don't like the refactored one I do,
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you can just stop with what we're going to do
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this time around and leave it organized this way.
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I think you'll find it to be a lot nicer.
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Okay, so what is the goal of this particular video?
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We're going to go in here, and we're going to define
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7 API methods, the 7 that we talked about
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at the beginning, and recall down here,
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we saw how to do this.
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We have some kind of route, some kind of HTTP verb.
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These are very important in RESTful services.
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We get the data; this, we're going to get
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from the database in the end.
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And, we're going to return just the JSON response
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of that dictionary.
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So, just to keep things movin' along,
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I'm going to go down here, and I'm going to,
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let's put these at the very bottom.
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I'm going to paste in some stuff, and we'll talk about it.
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These are not implementations.
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These are just getting started.
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So, the first one is going to be: find a particular user.
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So, we want to have api/game/users.
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And then, you'll put the name here.
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So, api/game/users/{name}, /computer /jeff or /jennifer.
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You say, whatever you want, there at the end,
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and that becomes this argument, right here.
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So, let's just do something like: return would find,
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just to make sure everything's working.
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We'll see.
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So, we still got to put the details of what that means.
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It turns out this one's quite simple.
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Some are really easy, some, not so much.
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So, what is the next one?
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So, down here, we're going to create a user.
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And, we're going to do an HTTP PUT to the user's collection.
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Why?
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Well, there's only two reasonable options, here.
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GET, get is out.
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Delete is obviously out.
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PATCH, obviously, they're out.
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But, POST or PUT, and if you think you can do the operation
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again and again and it shouldn't affect the state
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of the system, well then,
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PUT is probably what you want to do
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if you know where it goes.
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So, it's kind of, we're creating the /user,
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whatever we paste in here.
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So, this is going to create a user,
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and it's going to be interesting.
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I'll just say, we'd create_user.
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It's going to be interesting how we get to that data,
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and that's not too hard.
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Next, we're going to create a new game.
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So, over here, we have game.
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And then, you're going to just do a POST to game.
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You don't know where the ID or the link
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of that game is going to go.
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So, we're using POST as opposed to here,
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we know the name of the user we're creating,
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which drives the URL.
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That's the reason PUT.
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You don't have to be this nuanced with the rest,
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but this is the way I'm doin' it.
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Next one up, we're just going to be able to get all the rules.
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Remember, we want to be able to change the rules,
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potentially, in the server and have all the clients
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immediately adapt.
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And, this is a read operation, so we're going to do a GET,
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very, very straightforward.
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We'll implement that momentarily.
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Next step, we want to get the game status.
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This is a read operation, so it's GET.
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We have api/game, and then here, in this part,
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we're going to do the game ID.
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So, API/gameS223/status.
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And, that's going to be passed in here,
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and then we'll just say, almost there, with our methods.
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So, the next thing we want to do is just get the top scores.
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Again, this is a read operation.
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So, we'll just return.
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And finally, comes our most complicated
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but also most important method.
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Those often go together, don't they?
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Called play_round.
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And, because this is modifying, it's doing a POST.
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That's not where it goes, so this one is,
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it's ready to POST.
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Okay, so we have all of these methods, here,
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if I can get my little green helper thing
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to get out of the way.
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You notice that somewhere along the way,
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it was detecting changes, and it said,
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"A view mapping over ID.
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"Existing end point: find_user."
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That just happened 'cause I duplicated something
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before I typed it in.
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That happens, sometimes, when Flask gets into bug mode,
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is you can be messin' with it, and if you put, like,
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junk and you accidentally save it, it tries to reload.
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But then, it detects some kind of error,
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and if I actually take that away and save again,
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it's, the process is gone, got to restart it.
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Okay, so let's just test one of these:
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would find user jeff.
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How cool, huh?
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And, it's workin' pretty well.
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This works pretty well because this is a get operation,
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but how do you test this users by doing a PUT operation
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in the browser? Now, it's super easy.
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So, we're going to employ Postman to configure
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all this stuff for us.
