APIs, JSON & Data

Almost no app you build will live alone. The moment you want to show a map, charge a card, send an email, or look up the weather, your app has to talk to someone else's app. The language it speaks is called an API, and the words it sends back and forth are almost always written in a format called JSON. This chapter is about both — not so you can write the plumbing by hand, but so you can read it, sanity-check what the AI built, and notice when something is wrong before it costs you money.

You don't need to memorize anything here. You need to recognize the shapes. When the AI says "I'll call the Stripe API and parse the JSON response," you should be able to picture roughly what that means and what could go sideways.