October 3, 2024
Advanced API Security: Scopes, Roles, and Permissions
Welcome back to our programming tutorial series! In this lesson, we’ll explore advanced API security concepts, including scopes, roles, and permissions. These concepts are essential for controlling and managing access to specific resources within your API, ensuring that users can only perform actions they are authorized to.
Understanding API Scopes
Scopes define specific actions or areas of access that a token (such as a JWT) grants. When a client application requests an access token, it often specifies the scopes it needs. Scopes help limit the permissions granted to an application, ensuring the principle of least privilege.
...October 1, 2024
Working with APIs Using JWT (JSON Web Tokens)
Welcome back to our programming tutorial series! Today, we’ll explore how to use JSON Web Tokens (JWT) for authenticating and authorizing API requests. JWT is a widely-used standard for securing web APIs, providing a secure way to transmit information between parties.
What Is a JWT?
A JSON Web Token (JWT) is a compact, URL-safe token that represents a set of claims. JWTs are commonly used for authentication, allowing a client to prove its identity and access protected resources.
...September 30, 2024
Rate Limiting, Error Handling, and Best Practices for API Design
Welcome back to our programming tutorial series! In this post, we’ll explore some advanced topics related to APIs: rate limiting, error handling, and best practices for API design. These are crucial concepts when working with external APIs, ensuring that your application performs optimally and interacts with APIs efficiently.
What Is Rate Limiting?
Rate limiting is a technique used by APIs to control the number of requests a client can make in a given period. It helps prevent abuse, overloading, and ensures fair usage across all clients.
...September 29, 2024
OAuth and API Authentication: Accessing Secure APIs
Welcome back to our programming tutorial series! Today, we’ll explore OAuth and other forms of API authentication, which allow you to securely access protected APIs. Many APIs require authentication to ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive data or perform certain actions.
What Is OAuth?
OAuth (Open Authorization) is an open standard for access delegation. It allows users to grant third-party applications limited access to their resources without exposing their credentials. OAuth is commonly used for authentication and authorization in APIs from platforms like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
...September 28, 2024
Advanced API Usage: Pagination, Filtering, and Handling Large Datasets
Welcome back to our programming tutorial series! Now that you’ve learned how to make basic API requests, we’ll explore more advanced topics: pagination, filtering, and handling large datasets. These skills are essential for working with APIs that return large amounts of data.
When APIs return large datasets, they often use pagination to break the results into smaller chunks. This prevents a single API call from returning too much data at once, making it easier for clients to handle and for servers to manage.
...September 27, 2024
Working with APIs: Fetching Data from External Sources
Welcome back to our programming tutorial series! Today, we’ll explore how to work with APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) in Python. APIs allow your programs to interact with external services, fetching and sending data. By learning how to use APIs, you can integrate external data into your applications seamlessly.
What Is an API?
An API is a set of protocols and tools that allow one program to communicate with another. Most modern web services, like social media platforms, weather data providers, and financial markets, offer APIs to access their data.
...September 26, 2024
File I/O: Reading and Writing Files in Python
Welcome back to our programming tutorial series! Today, we’ll explore file I/O (Input/Output), a crucial concept for interacting with files in Python. You’ll learn how to read from and write to files, enabling your programs to store and retrieve data.
Why Use File I/O?
File I/O allows your program to persist data beyond its runtime. Instead of storing everything in memory, you can save data in a file and access it later, making your programs more versatile and useful.
...September 25, 2024
Error Handling and Exceptions in Python
Welcome back to our programming tutorial series! Today, we’ll explore error handling and exceptions in Python, which are crucial for writing robust programs. Error handling allows your program to deal with unexpected situations gracefully, rather than crashing.
What Are Exceptions?
Exceptions are errors that occur during the execution of a program. When Python encounters an error, it stops the program and raises an exception. You can handle these exceptions using try-except blocks to prevent your program from crashing.
...September 24, 2024
Hashing and Hash Functions: Efficient Data Retrieval
Welcome back to our programming tutorial series! Today, we’re diving into the concept of hashing and how hash functions play a crucial role in efficient data retrieval. Hashing is widely used in areas like data storage, retrieval, and cryptography.
What Is Hashing?
Hashing is a technique used to map data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values. It transforms input data (keys) into a hash value, which can be used as an index to quickly retrieve data.
...September 23, 2024
Introduction to Merge Sort and Time Complexity
Welcome back to our programming tutorial series! Today, we’ll explore one of the most efficient sorting algorithms: merge sort. We’ll also introduce the concept of time complexity, a critical factor in evaluating the efficiency of algorithms.
What Is Merge Sort?
Merge sort is a divide-and-conquer algorithm that recursively splits an array into smaller sub-arrays, sorts them, and then merges them back together. Unlike simpler algorithms like bubble sort or selection sort, merge sort is highly efficient even for large datasets.
...