APIs and API Design with Python

Description

Overview:

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) have become increasingly important as they provide developers with connectivity to everything from rich datasets in an array of formats (such as JSON), to exposing the configurability of software applications and network appliances. Lessons and labs focus on using Python to interact, design, and build APIs for the purposes of scripting automated solutions to complex tasks. Class is mostly live demonstrations and hands on labs.

Prerequisite(s):

Audience:

Outline:

Lesson 1: Python Review

• Lists
• Dictionaries
• Tuples
• Conditionals (if, elif, else)
• Loops (for and when)
• Functions
• Variable Scope – Review
• Converting boiler plate code to functional code
• Writing Functions (reusable code)
• Using pip
• Useful 3rd party modules
• Publishing a module
• Documenting modules

Lesson 2: OS Interfacing

• Operating System interfacing with OS module
• OS module – listdir(), getcwd(), mkdir()
• Common sys Module Attributes & Methods
• Working With the os Module & Files/Directories
• Walking File Trees with os.walk()
• File, Path and Directory Examples
• Working with os.path
• os & os.path Module Examples
• Environmental Variables
• Running Shell Commands
• Compressing and archiving (gzip, tar, zip)

Lesson 3: Web and RESTful APIs

• REST
• REST APIS and HTTP CRUD
• REST and OpenStack
• URI analysis and formation
• Wireshark capturing
• cURL
• Etcd keystore
• Creating a Python client to interact with API endpoints
• API dev keys
• SSH and Python
• Secure password retrieval
• Tokens and APIs

Lesson 4: Python Protocol Clients

• Scripting the browser
• Scripting with HTTP
• Creating an HTTP Client & Server
• Python and SSH
• Building an SFTP Client & Server
• Python and SFTP limitations
• Paramiko for SSH
• Netmiko and Major Network Vendors (Cisco, Juniper, Arista)
• JSON, YAML, XML, CSV and Excel
• JSON RFC 7159
• JSON Formatting
• YAML intro
• YAML lists
• YAML dictionaries
• YAML line spanning
• Reading YAML is easy
• XML
• CSV
• Import json
• Import yaml
• Decoding json and yaml to use
• Using python to decode data structures like YAML, XML, CSV, and JSON
• Reading from Excel
• Writing to Excel

Lesson 5: Generating and Sending Emails

• Overview of email modules
• Creating simple emails
• Interfacing with your email account

Lesson 6: Dates and Times

• Python and Cron
• Import time and time.time()
• Suspending with sleep()
• Dealing with time
• Time formatting
• Time tuples
• Creating Calendars

Lesson 7: Python Regular Expression (Regex)

• Metacharacter review
• Re modules
• search() and match()
• findall()
• Compiling regex search patterns
• Creating highly efficient searches
• Sorting data sets
• Complex sorts
• sort() vs sorted()
• Sorting with functions
• Applying Regex to file searches
• Applying Regex to API results

Lesson 8: Code Review

• Best practice
• Using pylint
• Conventions
• Underscore
• Double underscore
• Monkey Patching

Lesson 9: Web API Design with Flask

• Flask Overview
• Decorators
• Building APIs with Python and Flask
• APIs returning Jinja2 templating
• Returning a ‘cookie’
• Building Sessions
• Redirecting from URIs
• Build an API to accept a file upload

Lesson 10: SQLlite

• Overview
• Connecting to Python
• Read / Write operations
• Other useful instructions
• Connecting APIs and SQLite
• Reading and Writing to Databases with APIs

Lesson 11: Processes and Threads

• Threading
• Context change
• Deadlock errors
• Thread starvation
• Racing conditions and racing specifics
• Working with Locks