How the Web Works

Request

Response

What is HTTP(S)?

HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, which is the protocol we follow for transferring information over the internet. The (S) stands for secure. HTTP requests are made using URL's.

Structure of URL's

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and is a mixture of three parts that make up an HTTP request:

https://devmountain.com/about.html

REST and RESTful API's

API stands for Application Programming Interface, and is a place to send and retrieve data from a server. REST is a design concept for transferring data. To make an API RESTful, it must be able to be interacted with in four ways:

GET - Able to Retrieve Data

POST - Able to Add Data

PUT - Able to Update Data

DELETE - Able to Delete Data

CRUD

CRUD is a model that follows the REST concept. It is an acronym that consists of all the things you need to make an API complete:

CREATE (POST)

READ (GET)

UPDATE (PUT)

DELETE (DELETE)

Axios: Setup

Axios is a library that helps structure http requests. To set up Axios for your project, you need to install it:

Next, import axios to the component that is making the HTTP Request:

Axios: Implementation

Axios: Implementation

When the request is made, a promise is returned. A promise is a special object in JavaScript that will hold the response from our request. To handle this promise, we can use a .then and .catch method for if the request is successful or not.

Sending Additional Information

Sometimes you need to request more specific information, like a specific profile on a social media platform. This is where params, queries, and the body object come in.

Params

Params stands for parameters, and are a way to request more specific information. Params are added to the back of the url, separated with a '/' slash. 

https://swapi.co/api/people/1/

The above example would grab the person with the ID of 1 from swapi.

https://swapi.co

Queries

Queries are another way to request specific information in a URL. They are started by the '?' symbol, and then given a key value pair: The key being what data you're looking for, and the value being the specific value(such as an ID or name)

http://example.com/people/?name=matt

The above example would request a person with the name of Matt

The Request Body

The Request Body is another way we can send additional information. The Request Body is an object that is not part of the URL, but included after the URL in a request. It is a great option for adding or updating data.

axios.post('https://example.com/people', {name: 'Matt', age: 27})

The above example would add a person with the information in the body object.

JSON

JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation, and it is the language of servers. It allows us to transfer information between languages. It looks similar to an object, but all keys are wrapped in quotes.