How To Work With APIs in JavaScript

Description
In this video, Daniel Shiffman demonstrates how you can use APIs in JavaScript.

This video will answer four key questions about using APIs: What is an API? How can you sign up to use one? How can you get data from it? and How can you use this data in your own work?

Daniel suggests using Open Weather Map as a good starting point for this process. This is a great API to use as a beginner to get the feel for APIs and how they function. This video will show you how to access the API data held in the Open Weather Map, and demonstrate how this data can be used and manipulated in your own use. Daniel demonstrates what API keys are, how they function and how you can use them to access certain data. He then goes on to explain how URL query strings work and how you can use different inputs and your API key to access certain data.

Next, Daniel shows how you can format the data you extract from the API nicely using a Chrome extension. This extension will format the JSON data, allowing you to easily sort through and identify specific pieces of information.

Daniel then demonstrates how you can input this JSON data into a p5 sketchbook. This video will give you the opportunity to use and manipulate data in p5, allowing you to draw different things based on your data inputs.

Ultimately, this video will give you a step-by-step guide to finding API data, accessing it, inputting it into p5 and ultimately, using the data to draw things in p5.