Examples of Connecting to a REST API from Python

Connecting to a REST API using Python is a fundamental skill for many developers. Whether you’re fetching data from a web service, submitting user information, or integrating with third-party applications, understanding how to communicate with REST APIs can enhance your projects. In this article, we’ll explore three practical examples to help you get started.

Example 1: Fetching Weather Data from OpenWeatherMap

Use Case

Imagine you want to build a simple weather application that fetches current weather data based on a user’s location. OpenWeatherMap provides a REST API that allows you to retrieve weather information easily.

import requests

## Define the API endpoint and your API key
your_api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'
city = 'London'
url = f'http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q={city}&appid={your_api_key}&units=metric'

## Make a GET request to the API
response = requests.get(url)

## Check if the request was successful
if response.status_code == 200:
    data = response.json()
    temperature = data['main']['temp']
    weather_description = data['weather'][0]['description']
    print(f'The current temperature in {city} is {temperature}°C with {weather_description}.')
else:
    print('Failed to retrieve data:', response.status_code)

In this example, we import the requests library, define our API key and desired city, and make a GET request to the OpenWeatherMap API. We check for a successful response and then parse and display the temperature and weather description.

Notes

• Make sure to sign up at OpenWeatherMap to get your API key.
• You can modify the city variable to fetch weather data for different locations.

Example 2: Posting Data to a JSON Placeholder API

Use Case

Let’s say you’re working on a project where you need to submit user-generated content, like comments or posts. JSONPlaceholder is a fake online REST API that you can use for testing and prototyping.

import requests

## Define the API endpoint
url = 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts'

## Prepare the data you want to send
post_data = {
    'title': 'foo',
    'body': 'bar',
    'userId': 1
}

## Make a POST request to the API
response = requests.post(url, json=post_data)

## Check if the request was successful
if response.status_code == 201:
    print('Post created successfully:', response.json())
else:
    print('Failed to create post:', response.status_code)

In this example, we prepare a JSON object containing a title, body, and user ID, and send it to the JSONPlaceholder API using a POST request. We check for a successful creation of the post and print the response data.

Notes

• JSONPlaceholder is a great resource for practicing API interactions without needing an actual backend.
• You can modify the post_data dictionary to test different payloads.

Example 3: Authenticating with a GitHub API

Use Case

As a developer, you may want to interact with your GitHub account to fetch repositories or user information. The GitHub API requires authentication for certain endpoints, and this example shows how to authenticate using a personal access token.

```python
import requests
from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth

Define your GitHub username and personal access token

username = ‘YOUR_USERNAME’ token = ‘YOUR_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN’

Define the API endpoint to get user repositories

url = f’https://api.github.com/users/{username}/repos’

Make a GET request with authentication

response = requests.get(url, auth=HTTPBasicAuth(username, token))

Check if the request was successful

if response.status_code == 200:
repos = response.json()
for repo in repos:
print(f’Repo Name: {repo[