Introduction to the Course
Get an overview of the course, its intended audience, prerequisites, and learning objectives.
We'll cover the following
Food is the one thing with which every one of us can connect. People might want to prepare a tasty meal for themselves, find cuisine that supports a healthy diet, or avoid a dish with ingredients they’re allergic to or, maybe they are just fond of cooking. All of these create a demand for services that can provide access to a vast repository of food recipes. Spoonacular is one such service, and many developers have integrated the Spoonacular API into their food or health application.
What’s an API?
An API is a software gateway that allows different software components to communicate with each other. It helps expose the capabilities of an application to the outer world, allowing programmatic access to the application’s data.
Consider the case of a service like Spoonacular that provides us with access to recipes for different kinds of meals. Building and exposing an API for this service will allow others to fetch the data that this service offers programmatically.
Many popular services like YouTube, Reddit, and Google Maps also provide APIs for extended use cases. These services allow authorized clients to access the resources provided by them.
Intended audience
The intended audience for this course includes the following:
Beginners who want to explore the Spoonacular API and use it in their first project.
Professionals who have ample experience working with other APIs and want to integrate the Spoonacular API into their projects.
Prerequisites
This course requires an intermediate knowledge of JavaScript. We also assume you are well-versed in making REST API calls and are comfortable working with JSON objects. It’s also helpful to have some proficiency with JavaScript’s React framework for the project at the end of the course and familiarity with Airbnb’s code style guide for React applications. It also requires basic knowledge of API architecture.
Learning objectives
By the end of the course, you’ll be able to:
Understand the different services provided by the Spoonacular API.
Fetch data about recipes, ingredients, and grocery products available in Spoonacular’s vast database.
Explore a simple React web application integrated with the Spoonacular API.