Easily build a REST API with Spring Framework
# The Concept

Before I even start explaining how to create an API, you should first know what this thing called “API” is.

To begin with, API stands for Application Programming Interface, Wikipedia explains it as:

A computing interface that defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries. It defines the kinds of calls or requests that can be made, how to make them, the data formats that should be used, the conventions to follow, etc.

Let’s try mapping it to a specific example: Imagine you have a portfolio web page, where you share some information about yourself, like interests, side-jobs, professional experience, projects, and so on. Now you want people who follow you, to be always up to speed about your Spotify preferences.

You may think about manually going to your Spotify account and copy your liked songs, it may work if you are an inactive user, however if not, it will quickly become a cumbersome task.

That’s when the API word comes in, Spotify and a lot of other companies already developed their APIs, so people like you can avoid problems like this.

developer.spotify.com

In such a context, you will simply need to contact their API and request all the data that may fulfill your needs. In this case, your liked songs.

An API can be described as an application that exposes services without the need of having a front end.

Let’s now create our API example so we can easily understand what has been explained so far.
['Rafael Martins']
['Technology', 'Software Engineering', 'Java', 'Spring Framework', 'Programming']