The internet is an important source of data, and programmatic access
to online data has revolutionized our ability as researchers to ask
interesting questions across domains. This workshop, led by Professor Seth Frey,
will provide a conceptual introduction to APIs (Application Programming
Interface), which allow software programs to communicate with one
another and facilitate your ability to access online data. Learners will
be presented with executable code snippets and motivational examples to
explore the utility of APIs for different use cases. We’ll do some
hands on practice with one popular API, Twitter, and discuss API limits
and practical workarounds, including time/cost tradeoffs.
By the end of this workshop learners will be able to:
– explain the basics of scraping data from the web using an API
– run Python code in a notebook
– modify code to retrieve specific data from Twitter
– identify additional learning resources for working with, and beyond, APIs
PREREQUISITES & TARGET LEARNERS
Learners with basic Python proficiency will gain the most from this
workshop. But no prior knowledge of Python is required to learn about
APIs or run the code. All learners wanting to run the code should obtain a Twitter API key in advance of the workshop. All members of the UC Davis community are welcome to attend.
The copyright on
this video is owned by the Regents of the University of California and is
licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC
BY 4.0) License.
