This course in our Data Analyst in R path will help you build on the R programming skills you’ve learned to unlock a new world of data: APIs.

Although there are many datasets available in convenient formats like CSVs, there is also a large amount of data that is accessible to data analysts only via an API. If you want to analyze streaming data from Twitter, for example, or dig into posting trends on reddit, you’ll need to be able to get that data from the relevant APIs.

In this course, you’ll learn the fundamentals of APIs, like how to connect to an open API, and how to interpret different status codes. You’ll also learn how to work with the JSON data format in R, since most data from APIs will be provided in JSON format.

Then, you’ll tackle more complex tasks like authenticating with private APIs, and submitting more complex requests.

The course wraps up with a guided challenge that’ll help you build more experience working with different types of APIs and API requests. Finally, you’ll put together a full data analysis project using an API to get data on New York’s solar energy resources.
By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:

• Authenticate and connect to an API using R.
• Submit API requests, and parse the JSON data that’s returned.
• Interpret various API status codes.