1 00:00:05,360 --> 00:00:10,377 At the end of the last video, I mentioned that we could do something more useful with our shopping list. 2 00:00:10,377 --> 00:00:15,200 If we just print it out, our cooks will have to write the list down before they go shopping. 3 00:00:15,200 --> 00:00:20,588 If we store it in some kind of data structure, as we've done, we could do something more exciting with it. 4 00:00:20,588 --> 00:00:24,480 So in this video, I'm going to demonstrate something more exciting. Now I'm not going to show 5 00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:31,840 you the code for this, nor will I make it available in the resources for this video. This is purely a 6 00:00:31,840 --> 00:00:36,880 demonstration of what's possible. At this point in the course, you haven't learned enough to be 7 00:00:36,880 --> 00:00:43,760 messing with your Google accounts. It's possible, if you attempt too many logins too quickly, or get the 8 00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:48,800 authentication wrong, that Google will lock you out of your account. Now of course, if you're using an 9 00:00:48,800 --> 00:00:54,240 iPhone that wouldn't bother you as much, but if your main phone is an Android device, then being 10 00:00:54,240 --> 00:00:59,440 locked out will be inconvenient, to say the least. Now another reason I won't be making this code 11 00:00:59,440 --> 00:01:08,480 available, is that it uses an unofficial API. We'll see the demo, and then I'll talk a bit about APIs. 12 00:01:08,480 --> 00:01:13,600 Alright, so I have to run this demo from a terminal, rather than from Intellij's Run pane, and that's 13 00:01:13,600 --> 00:01:20,759 because we're using the Python getpass module. I'll quickly go to a browser - we'll check that out. 14 00:01:22,160 --> 00:01:27,840 Now the getpass function is similar to input, but it doesn't echo the input to the console. 15 00:01:27,840 --> 00:01:32,640 If you used the input function here, my username and password would be visible on the video, which 16 00:01:32,640 --> 00:01:38,400 obviously, isn't a good thing. If you use getpass in your code, be aware that it doesn't work in the 17 00:01:38,400 --> 00:01:44,560 Intellij Run pane. It does, however, work in the Intellij terminal, as well as a normal terminal 18 00:01:44,560 --> 00:01:48,720 and Windows command prompt. Alright, so swinging back to the code again. 19 00:01:48,720 --> 00:01:55,088 Alright, so I'm going to open the terminal. I'm going to right click up here, and select Open in terminal. 20 00:01:55,440 --> 00:02:02,720 And make sure that's set up to go to the right; Move to, Right Top, and what I'm going to do, 21 00:02:02,720 --> 00:02:09,919 is simultaneously now, start recording on my Android phone. Alright, so you can see my recorder on 22 00:02:09,919 --> 00:02:15,200 screen now - the Android screen, and I go into my keep notes app which is part of Android. 23 00:02:15,200 --> 00:02:18,480 And you can see at the moment, we've got no notes showing there, and what I'm going to do 24 00:02:18,480 --> 00:02:24,320 is leave that open while we're running this. Next thing I'm going to do from our terminal session, 25 00:02:24,320 --> 00:02:31,840 is type python meal_planner - we get rid of this little prompt here - 26 00:02:31,840 --> 00:02:34,441 planner.py. 27 00:02:35,360 --> 00:02:44,960 Now I'm going to use the same options we've used previously; four, two, five and then zero. 28 00:02:44,960 --> 00:02:50,000 So I've finished choosing the recipes, and I've exited the program. Next you can see what it's asking for, 29 00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:57,086 is it's asking me to log in to my Google account. I'm going to type in my username and password 30 00:03:01,440 --> 00:03:06,400 If I've got it right, we keep watching the screen, you should see that we get a message that it's 31 00:03:06,400 --> 00:03:09,789 been added - it's added some things - and looking at our notes app, 32 00:03:09,789 --> 00:03:14,240 you can see what happened there in real time. The Shopping List was created on my mobile phone. 33 00:03:14,240 --> 00:03:19,680 So I've got the items that I need, transferred from our Python application, to the phone. So this 34 00:03:19,680 --> 00:03:26,320 time what I'll do, is I'll close down our notes application. I'm going to run the program again. 35 00:03:26,320 --> 00:03:31,200 This time I'm going to choose option 6: Spam a la tin. 36 00:03:31,200 --> 00:03:37,902 And you can see that there's two options there; tin opener and a spoon that we need - zero to exit. 37 00:03:38,480 --> 00:03:45,840 I need to log in again, paste that in and enter the password. 38 00:03:49,440 --> 00:03:54,160 So we've got that added now, and if we go back to our Android application. And you saw what happened 39 00:03:54,160 --> 00:03:59,680 when I opened it - we got those two extra items appear; the tin opener and the spoon. So that's 40 00:03:59,680 --> 00:04:05,520 really cool. I can now check off the things I buy, but it wouldn't be hard to use the same API to 41 00:04:05,520 --> 00:04:11,840 read the note and update our pantry, with the items bought. Microsoft have published an API for OneNote, 42 00:04:11,840 --> 00:04:16,880 allowing you to use that instead of Google Keep, if you prefer. There's also a Google Drive API, 43 00:04:16,880 --> 00:04:21,360 if you want to create a document on Google Drive and open that on your phone. A bit of googling will find 44 00:04:21,360 --> 00:04:30,800 APIs for Evernote, and the Apple iCloud as well. So what exactly is an API? Well API is an acronym for 45 00:04:30,800 --> 00:04:36,480 Application Programming Interface. It defines the objects and functions that are made available, 46 00:04:36,480 --> 00:04:42,240 and how to use them. We've already used a lot of APIs in this course. For example, we used the list API 47 00:04:42,240 --> 00:04:46,960 when we worked with lists. The documentation described the list object, and the methods 48 00:04:46,960 --> 00:04:53,920 we can use to manipulate lists. Shortly, we'll look at the documentation for Python's dict API. 49 00:04:53,920 --> 00:04:59,938 You wouldn't normally find programmers referring to these as APIs, but that's really what they are. 50 00:05:00,800 --> 00:05:06,080 If you create a system that other programmers will find useful, you may decide to create an API for 51 00:05:06,080 --> 00:05:12,080 that system. For example, Google make all sorts of data available. Raw data can be useful, 52 00:05:12,080 --> 00:05:17,600 but providing a way to interact with that data is even better. Google provides a YouTube API 53 00:05:17,600 --> 00:05:22,960 that lets you query YouTube, to get statistics on your YouTube channels. Those statistics are 54 00:05:22,960 --> 00:05:26,720 available when you log into the YouTube website, but you may want to write your own programs 55 00:05:26,720 --> 00:05:33,728 to analyse the statistics. Their channels API lets you do that from your Python code. 56 00:05:34,400 --> 00:05:38,960 Students sometimes ask how they can allow a user to log in, with a password, before being 57 00:05:38,960 --> 00:05:45,440 granted access to a program. Our advice is - don't. Authenticating users is extremely difficult to 58 00:05:45,440 --> 00:05:50,560 get right, and comes with all sorts of problems. You may be aware of websites getting hacked, and all 59 00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:56,566 their customers passwords being stolen. If you need to perform authentication, let someone else handle it. 60 00:05:56,566 --> 00:06:01,680 Google, Apple and Facebook, to name a few, spend a lot of money on their authentication systems. 61 00:06:01,680 --> 00:06:08,425 They have the resources to make them secure, and the money to spend on development and testing. 62 00:06:08,960 --> 00:06:13,440 Alright, so I'm going to switch over to a browser, to show Google's documentation for their Oauth 63 00:06:13,440 --> 00:06:19,117 API that you can use from Python. You can see the link on the screen - it's in the resources section. 64 00:06:19,600 --> 00:06:24,640 There are some setup steps you'd need to complete, before using this API, but you can see here a 65 00:06:24,640 --> 00:06:32,320 description of how to use this Oauth 2.0 API from Python. What's more, they also have APIs 66 00:06:32,320 --> 00:06:37,760 for Google Docs, Maps and a host of other things that Google do. Unfortunately, they haven't produced 67 00:06:37,760 --> 00:06:42,480 an API for Google Keep. Programmers have been requesting one for about seven years, 68 00:06:42,480 --> 00:06:49,626 and actually, in 2019 Google did hint that they'd be providing one, but to date, we haven't seen one. 69 00:06:50,240 --> 00:06:55,840 An official API is supported by whoever created it. More importantly, there's an implicit guarantee 70 00:06:55,840 --> 00:07:00,960 that the API won't be changed in a way that breaks client code. If you write code that 71 00:07:00,960 --> 00:07:06,320 uses a Google API, for example, then Google will make sure that any changes they make won't cause 72 00:07:06,320 --> 00:07:13,280 your code to break. The Google Keep API that we've used is an unofficial one. A programmer named Kai 73 00:07:13,280 --> 00:07:16,960 created a module to use that API, and has made it available. 74 00:07:16,960 --> 00:07:23,931 But if Google change the way Keep works, any code using Kai's API might break. 75 00:07:24,560 --> 00:07:28,560 Now if you're an experienced programmer, you'll have no trouble finding Kai's API 76 00:07:28,560 --> 00:07:31,920 and working out how to use it. But if you're new to programming, it's a 77 00:07:31,920 --> 00:07:36,160 bit early in the course to be experimenting with your live Google or Microsoft accounts. 78 00:07:36,160 --> 00:07:40,800 By the end of the course, you'll be able to make sense of published APIs, and use them in your 79 00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:47,440 programs. With a bit of extra code, our simple meal planner program became a lot more useful. 80 00:07:47,440 --> 00:07:52,320 There's all sorts of APIs available, to let us do all sorts of interesting things. 81 00:07:52,320 --> 00:07:57,040 Now if you think of something you'd like to do, google for it - it's very likely that you'll find at least 82 00:07:57,040 --> 00:08:01,840 one Python module that will help. Alright, so let's end the video here, and in the next one, 83 00:08:01,840 --> 00:08:07,600 we'll have a look at the dict API - the documentation for dictionaries. See you in the next video.