Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are an essential part of the web. These tools allow you to interact with other platforms.
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For example, you can use the Twitter API to post Tweets or display a list of Tweets on your timeline. You can use the Airtable API to access your spreadsheets on Airtable and add new records. But, how do you actually interact with APIs?
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One of the most common ways to interact with an API is through cURL, a command line tool that allows you to make web requests. It\u2019s likely most APIs you\u2019ve seen in your history as a developer will have included at least some documentation on how to use cURL with their API.
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In this guide, we\u2019re going to discuss what cURL is and how you can use it to make a web request. We\u2019ll also walk through a few basic curl commands to help you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
cURL stands for \u201cclient URL\u201d and is a command line tool that allows you to interact with websites. You can use it to make any type of web request. This means you can use cURL to get information from APIs, download webpages or submit data to an API.
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cURL comes installed on most UNIX-based operating systems, so unless you are running an Apple II, then you probably already have the package installed. When you use cURL as a command, you don\u2019t need to capitalize the term: just use the command In this tutorial, we\u2019re going to discuss how to use cURL to retrieve information from the Airtable API. This API allows you to view, create and amend records in an Airtable database, which is similar to a spreadsheet. Our Airtable document contains a list of teas with some tasting notes. The Airtable API provides two options you can use to interact with their API: cURL or JavaScript. Of course, we\u2019re going to focus on the cURL option in this tutorial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To make a cURL web request, we only need to specify \u201ccurl\u201d, followed by the URL that we want to retrieve. If we want to make a GET web request to the Airtable API, we could use this command:<\/p>\n\n\n\n When this command is executed, the following is returned:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our cURL command has successfully made a web request! The problem is that we haven\u2019t yet specified an API key, which we must use to authenticate ourselves. To do so, we are going to follow the instructions on the Airtable API and specify an \u201cauthorization\u201d header:curl<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHow to Make a Request Using cURL<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nMake a GET Request Using cURL<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
curl \"https:\/\/api.airtable.com\/v0\/appiTz7oLBs9hDIFg\/Tracker?maxRecords=3&view=Grid%20view\"<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
{\"error\":{\"type\":\"AUTHENTICATION_REQUIRED\",\"message\":\"Authentication required\"}}<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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