Application Development

APIs & Datasets

Consuming and building APIs, then finding, cleaning and joining real public datasets, with the provenance and licensing questions treated as part of the work rather than a footnote.

The course project

Open Record

A small, honest investigation built from public sources, published with its method, its sources and its limits stated plainly.

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course

14 modules · 28 lessons

Each module ends with a practice test, a graded build, and a step of the course project.

Part I: Asking

01

What an API Is

Someone else's data, on their terms, which you are a guest of.

02

JSON

Six types, and a hundred ways real responses will still surprise you.

03

Reading the Documentation

Five things to find before writing any code, and one request to make by hand.

04

Keys and Secrets

How to hold a credential without publishing it by accident.

Section project · coming soon

Ask a Public API

Make requests, read the response and answer one question from it.

Part II: Collecting

05

Pagination

Nobody hands you a million rows at once, and everybody splits them differently.

06

Rate Limits and Retries

Slowing down on purpose, and knowing what is worth trying again.

07

Building a Small API

Serving data yourself, now that you know what a good client needs.

Section project · coming soon

Collect a Dataset

Page through an API and save everything it gives you.

Part III: Reading

08

Finding Datasets

Judging a source before you write a line of code against it.

09

CSV and Tabular Data

The most common format, and the least specified one.

10

Cleaning

Decisions, not chores. Every one of them changes a number downstream.

Section project · coming soon

Clean a Messy File

Parse CSV and JSON with gaps and mistakes, and say what you fixed.

Part IV: Making Sense

11

Joining

Two datasets, one key, and all the ways rows disappear.

12

Checking Your Own Work

The questions to ask before you believe your own number.

Section project · coming soon

Three Honest Charts

Summarize the data and chart it without misleading anyone.

Part V: Publishing

13

Licensing and Provenance

A number you cannot source is a number you cannot publish.

Section project · coming soon

Publish With Its Sources

Write up what you found, with sources, limits and a methods note.

Part VI: Capstone

14

The Open Record

Requirements and acceptance criteria. No instructions.

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