Building REST APIs with Python

Learn how to create RESTful APIs with Flask and Python

Photo by Douglas Lopes on Unsplash

In the world of web development, REST (Representational State Transfer) APIs have become a standard for building scalable and secure web applications. REST APIs allow clients, such as web and mobile applications, to interact with a server by sending HTTP requests and receiving responses. Flask is a popular microweb framework for building RESTful APIs in Python.

Let’s look at how we can build RESTful APIs with Flask and Python.

Setting up Flask

To get started, you need to have Flask installed on your machine. You can install Flask using the following command:

pip install Flask

Once you have Flask installed, you can create a new Flask application by creating a new file and writing the following code:

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/")
def index():
    return "Hello, World!"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run()

This code creates a new Flask application and defines a single endpoint, /, which returns the message "Hello, World!". To run the application, you can execute the following command:

python app.py