Cat facts with Python and API

Did you know you can get cat facts with Python?

There's a API for cat facts. Yes, really :)

An API lets you get data, it's a "data provider". They are used in almost every web app. This lets you practice with APIs and Python.

It has two end points

If you open the url https://cat-fact.herokuapp.com/facts you get all the facts in JSON data. An id would give only a single object.

So how to use that in Python?

This little program with requests will do it:

#!/usr/bin/python3
#_*_coding: utf-8_*_
import time
import json
import requests

data = requests.get('https://cat- fact.herokuapp.com/facts/58e0086f0aac31001185ed02')
print(data.json())

Get cat fact

What if you want only one fact?

You can add the id like this:

data = requests.get('https://cat-fact.herokuapp.com/facts/58e0086f0aac31001185ed02')

Then use the text attribute (see inside json object) to get the fact

#!/usr/bin/python3
#_*_coding: utf-8_*_
import time
import json
import requests

data = requests.get('https://cat- 
fact.herokuapp.com/facts/58e0086f0aac31001185ed02')
print(data.json()['text'])

This is how you can interact with the API. Try it out on your own :)

Resources:

• Learn Python Programming
• More on JSON
• API with data about cats