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REST APIs with Express

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HTTP Methods and CRUD Operations

2:08 with Treasure Porth

CRUD operations and how they relate to HTTP methods.

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    Think about the web applications you interact with on a daily basis. 0:00
    We use applications for huge variety of things, but at their simplest, 0:04
    many follow a common pattern, create, read, update and delete. 0:08
    Take a blog or a popular social media site, for example. 0:12
    You can usually make a new post, that's create, view other posts, 0:15
    that's read, edit a post, that's update, or delete a post, that's delete. 0:20
    This pattern is commonly known by the acronym CRUD, create, read, update and 0:25
    delete. 0:30
    REST APIs allow a client to manipulate data using actions that map closely to 0:30
    the idea of CRUD. 0:35
    These actions are get, post, put and delete. 0:36
    Get, post, put, and delete are known as HTTP verbs or HTTP methods. 0:40
    There are actually many more HTTP methods, but 0:45
    we'll concentrate on these four because they're the most commonly used. 0:48
    See the teacher's notes if you want to learn more about HTTP protocol, but 0:51
    basically it's an agreed upon standard for communication over the Internet. 0:55
    Information in a REST API is typically organized using nouns that describe 0:59
    what the data represents, nouns like users, posts, movies, or recipes. 1:04
    Using HTTP methods and API nouns, a client can tell a REST API what information 1:08
    it wants and what it wants to do with that information. 1:13
    As an example, If the client sends a get request to the resource/movies, 1:17
    it means it expects to read or view data representing a collection of movies. 1:21
    A post request means it wants to create a new movie. 1:26
    Put means it wants to update an existing movie, and 1:29
    delete means it wants to, you got it, delete a movie. 1:33
    When we write an API, 1:36
    we're essentially programming responses to various HTTP requests for resources. 1:38
    Through code, we say to our express application, 1:43
    when a client makes a get request to the resource/movies, 1:45
    respond with a JSON object containing a list of movies. 1:49
    At the core, that's really all an express API does. 1:52
    It takes in requests, and responds with JSON objects. 1:55
    I've just thrown a lot at you that may seem unfamiliar, but stick with it. 1:59
    In the next video, 2:02
    we'll build a simplified example of how this all comes together in code. 2:03
    Are you ready? 2:07

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