Consuming HTTP Services in Python Transcripts
Chapter: Welcome to the course
Lecture: Welcome to the course and what we'll cover
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As you know, it's a services world out there,
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almost anything you need to interact with
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has an API and if there is no API, there is probably a webpage
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and I am going to show you that the combination of APIs
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and web pages allow you to connect your app to almost anything.
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So we might want to talk to github to work with source code, repositories,
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automated builds, maybe we want to use Twilio
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for adding telephony and text services to our app,
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of course we want to update people through their Slack channel,
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send and subscribe people to our mailing list via MailChimp
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charge them money over their credit cards using the Stripe APIs,
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query some backend business data using Salesforce,
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send out some emails with SendGrid
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or even manage and work with our projects offline through Basecamp.
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So if we want to connect our app to these types of services, and many more,
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we are going to need to learn how to work with services in Python.
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And that's what consuming HTTP and Soap services in Python is all about.
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So, whether you want to talk to github, Stripe, Basecamp
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or even that old fashioned Soap service that runs the backend of your business,
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you are going to learn how to do that here,
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And by working with all this services,
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you'll see that you can give your app super powers.
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I hope you are very excited to explore the world of services from Python with me.
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What are we going to cover in this course?
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Well, we are going to talk primarily about transports that run over HTTP,
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Rest, Json over Rest or XML, or a variety of other things,
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and we are even going to talk about Soap.
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So we are going to use Requests, we are going to use urllib2
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and we are going to use urllib.requests.
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Now, if you are unfamiliar with these, Requests is the most popular way
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to write Python clients for services,
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however, sometimes we want to use stuff that is in the box if you will
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that comes with your Python distribution that everybody already has,
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because Requests you have to install separately.
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So we are going to talk about Python 2's urllib2 and Python 3's urllib
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and associated submodules like Requests and error and so on.
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Now, many of these services are going to require us to authenticate, to log in,
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so we are going to see how we can do username,
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and password authentication to access restricted services,
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we are going to work with a variety of different data formats.
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When we talk to these HTTP services, they might want to send us data
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back in the form of Json, or xml, or super complicated xml in the form of Soap
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or even binary data, so, we are going to look at how each one of these data formats
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is managed and worked with in Python
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and how to use that kind of data from a service,
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and finally, if there is no service, we are also going to talk about screen scraping.
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Often we'll have a direct end point that we can contact and use
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a well known API against, but if the data is on a webpage and there is no API,
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what do you do? Well, you do screen scraping, and screen scraping will let you go
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to a standard HTML page and more or less turn that HTML page into an API
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or series of HTML pages, so at the end of the course, the final chapter
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that we are going to cover is doing basically adding services to websites
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that don't have services by making their webpage themselves
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the thing that provides data to our app.
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So that is what we are going to cover, and who am I anyway?
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Well, my name is Michael Kennedy, thank you so much for taking my class,
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hey, that's what I look like, it's nice to meet you,
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you can follow me on twitter at @mkennedy and why should I be teaching this course?
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Well, I've been working with Python for quite a while, I run Talk Python To Me,
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the number one Python podcast with over three million downloads,
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so I've had the unique opportunity to interview hundreds of people
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who are doing amazing things in Python and many of them
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have written the libraries that we are actually going to cover here,
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so when it makes sense, I am going to actually give you a look behind the scenes,
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at the people behind some of these technologies
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that we are actually going to cover in this course.
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I am also the creator and founder of Talk Python Training,
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I've written many of the courses and I have over ten years experience
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teaching hundreds of in person and online courses throughout the world,
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so I am super excited you are at my class, it's great to meet you
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and we are going to have a great time working with all of these services.