How To Do Any API Request: Beginner's Guide For Any Software's API Documentation | Tutorial
Let's build with Zapier and AI (100+ videos)📅 2023-08-29
Transcript
[00:00] welcome back to Corbin AI we do daily artificial intelligence videos for your personal and business life and you click on today's video because you want to see how you can start accessing apis of softwares for any type of software and we're going to show you how to do that today now the reason I have a poll behind me is because we're going to be focusing on a software that was requested by one of our followers here so we go ahead and put out these polls every so often asking you as a viewer essentially what you want us to do on this channel when it comes to API or just anything artificial tells us
[00:30] automation if you scroll down here the software I'm using today is going to be jot forms so we're going to be going full depth everything you need to know about jotforms but don't click off yet the reason we're showing jaw forms is that what we're about to show you and the skills you're about to learn you can apply to any type of API documentation you plan on implementing in your business or other clients businesses now with that being said this is probably one of the most valuable videos we do on this channel so make sure to watch the entire thing I cannot stress this enough
[01:00] being able to do the skills we're about to show you right now is going to be tremendously important for any type of business that plans on doing automation for their backend or clients businesses understanding how to leverage the skills we're about to show you in this video is going to be tremendous for you so go ahead and leave a like for the value let's go ahead and jump in here and start off with the platform we're going to be using to Showcase these skills which is going to be jotform give a little bit more context right off the bat here essentially we're going to show you how to use Channel DBT and a specific plugin here and essentially
[01:31] talk to that specific plugin with chadwt so you can do the skills that we're about to show you for any type of API documentation and essentially you know be very comfortable with this kind of framework so from here let's go ahead and scroll down here we can see the limitations that we have access to when it comes to jotforms so we go to triggers and actions we have the ability to do five different things for jotforms but as you see here we have the ability to also do API requests so what's nice about that essentially is this is going to give us the ability
[02:02] where every time we want to do a function that's custom and not you know shown as one of these uh we don't have to give an authentication token so what I mean by that essentially is some apps within zapier will provide doesn't provide an API request essentially you just have to do web Hooks and then provide I can speak today an authentication token in order to access it in that context you're looking at a lot of web hooks let me know in the comments down below if you want to see a more in-depth video on that topic for this video specifically though we're going to be looking at apps that
[02:33] integrate with zapier but are limited to its ability to do certain functions triggers and actions and really utilizing this API request beta is going to be really easy stuff once you understand the process here so now that we understand jotforms here for this video I went ahead and created a jotforms account so as you see here a free account here I'm gonna go ahead and get started here let me go ahead and create a free account here what's nice about jotforms is I'm going to be able to still access its API with a free account and here we go we are in jotforms here perfect let me go ahead
[03:04] and come over to zapier let's go ahead and add it as a connection jot forms there we go it's going to say no to both of these and say yes continue to jotform and hit allow and we should be good to go perfect we are in so now we have it connected so essentially what this means for us is that the authentication token whatever the context may be is always going to be active so we can always call upon this let's go ahead and create a new zap here and start messing around with job forms
[03:35] API documentation I'm going to move this over here real quick so we have a back end right here now we have the API documentation right here so let me go ahead and show you fine to how to find API documentation for any type of app here come to Google type in the app you want to use uh access the a the API for so for us we got job form here someone do API documentation and then is going to be our first option here so some apps don't have the ability to do API documentation they gatekeep it either it's a private or essentially you just have no ability so keep that in mind but from here we have access to the
[04:06] API documentation now a lot of times if you're already natively integrated into zapier here as you see here if it's already here you don't have to worry about let me go ahead and close this out here you don't have to worry about the authentication part this is essentially what zapier does for you so we essentially know exactly who we're talking to and we have the rights to even access that API now in that one in that one situation I was describing earlier where essentially you're dealing with just a bunch of web hooks this is more important as we'll need to add this
[04:36] in the headers for this video though we don't have to worry about that we're going to essentially use this API documentation and chat gbt here here's the secret key we use gbt4 and we're going to use the plugin of web pilot why are we using webpilot webpilot is going to allow us to essentially grab the data found on this webpage now there's multiple ways to approach this some documentation that's like more rather than like a long list like this could be better because you don't want to front load gbt too much
[05:07] but in most contexts what you can do is you can kind of start by loading Jazzy BT and letting you understand what the situation is and what we plan on doing so I'm gonna come back over to chadbt here we're going to say we plan on using zapier and jotform API here is the current documentation now I'll be 100 transparent here you know entering in this link it's not gonna be able to grab everything here I mean that's a lot of information but what we did there is we
[05:37] did two main things first thing we did is that we identified we're using zapier so now it understands that we're working in the Realms of zapier we're not using other platforms we're trying to access the API the second thing is is that we're giving it context of what type of API we're dealing with here so in this context we're dealing with jotform so that is two main functions here from here though let's go ahead and start messing around with some of the actions here so a lot of times what's an API call is essentially is going to be where you know you're essentially using a web
[06:08] hook in zapier or in this context you're going to be using a natively integrated API request so in this in this context we can only do as an action so let's just say for example so we can just start accessing the API request let's go ahead and change this to uh scheduler we're just going to go ahead and just say every day when they continue here just choose some time of day at midnight for the night owls out there hit action here and then let's go ahead and add our jot jotform block here so
[06:40] now that we've added our jotform block here this is where API request becomes very important so we're going to hit API request here hit continue hit continue and we get all this information so what's nice about zapier is a lot of times they'll provide you a direct link to the docs if they don't you know the alternative solution to that from here though as you'll see you have a bunch of different information when it comes to what you can do with the underlying API right so the way that they this is organized pretty nicely the way that they have it organized is you know user form submission reports folder system
[07:12] and what you can do essentially is let's first understand what each of these mean so for example when it says git essentially what git means is that we're going to be going into jot forms and this is for any context right this is unilateral so if you're using calendly YouTube's API whatever it may be if you're doing git all that means essentially is we're trying to grab data from their back end and push it towards this back end that's what git means if we are doing an action of post that means that we want to use information that we created in
[07:43] our zapier here or make whatever automation solution that you're using and we're pushing it towards jotforms back in so just passing data around those are going to be your two main functions here there are some use cases where you're going to use other functions here as you see we have different HTTP methods here such as git patch put post delete a lot of times you're either using git or post I've had context in the past where you use a function like delete so delete essentially is if I'm trying to delete data within a backend
[08:14] um you know a context this you know Works in for business is if I'm using stripe EPI and I want to delete a subscriber that is not paying their bills and you know maybe you did a follow-up they're not still not paying all right let's go use an API call to delete them in your backend to limit the access to that subscription service so that's an example there from here though let's just go ahead and show you one of these so you can kind of get an idea of you know something very simple here and kind of perceive him there so let's go ahead and create a sample data here I'm just going to create a form here let's
[08:45] use a template um let's do new customer registration um and then from here what I'm going to do is I'm gonna just go from there let's see if I can just real quickly just publish it and give some sample data okay say open new tab all right am I gonna be able to submit perfect so I'm just gonna go ahead and put some information here Tom uh address okay you want my last name Tom Adams and then address uh let's just give a random address here
[09:15] let's just give this address shall we all right 702 postal code Houston I want to show you the whole process here so you can understand exactly what we're doing here so there is no empty space uh phone number zero zero zero zero zero zero go ahead and call that and you'll be able to talk to me right away and then uh you know newspaper let's just put uh I love what you do and then suggestions for any Improvement uh please
[09:47] uh if we just do no improvement I guess and then yeah okay submit perfect so submission receipt okay so we got a data point we have a form here let's go ahead and see what it looks like in the back and I'll be completely transparent I have never used jotform before so I'm figuring out their UI right now so we do have the form here we got one submission as well and so we have some data to play around with nice little Excel sheet looking thing um and we can kind of go from here so
[10:17] let's go ahead and do our first uh no I don't want to give you that let's go ahead and do our first function here using API request and I'm going to show you how to do a chat GPT so you can really understand if you are completely new to this or you have some experience how to start leveraging it so I'm gonna go ahead and rename this to API showcase and then what I'm going to do here is let's go ahead and change our trigger to the sample data we just created here so we have some stuff to play around with so you can really understand how it like intricacy wise it works pretty cool
[10:48] stuff here so we'll say new submission I'm going to continue here uh the form we're gonna be doing is new customer registration form it's going to test this trigger it should give us that data we just created together here perfect and let's go ahead and do our first function here so I'm going to come back over to our API and let's just say it is really simple we're going to get more complex don't worry but let's just say we want to do something like we go to we go to the form section here and we want to get the questions associated with a form even though yes I know it does show up in that test data we're going to do
[11:18] it together so you're gonna have a very simple form or simple idea of how to do this so we're going to say okay we're gonna so because of the fact that the way that this API documentation is structured is like this um it's like a single page um I'm going to go ahead and load the data in manually rather than use the web pilot do the facts oh it's going to reload this because I had to reload that and now it all shows up here and understands I'm gonna go ahead and load the data in manually because I'd rather do that than say hey look at this link find this specific you know function
[11:49] we're trying to do there's too much information for it to handle now in the context of your API documentation like you've seen in YouTube's API notice how it's it's single page where essentially if I collect one of the specific functions it'll bring me to a single page I can load that Euro that can expediate processes this is just a little bit more manual so let's go ahead and just proceed with a little bit more manual so what you want to do essentially is um give a context we're going to say okay we are going to use a zapier webhook to do the following in jot forms
[12:23] API now the reason I say exact oh I kind of did a little too premature I'm going to stop that the reason I say zapier's web hook and not a uh API request is because we're just going to identify that essentially we don't need to authenticate as you'll see here so we're going to say we're essentially going to provide all the information right so we're going to provide this information and then we're going to go ahead and copy this so copy all relevant information if you have no clue what you're doing this is why I'm showing this because essentially what this is going to allow us to do is you're gonna be able to talk to it so we're going to
[12:53] go ahead and say save and submit here and let's see what its first interaction is here so as you see here it's already entailing me to do set up a job form API key we don't have to worry about that so essentially what that means in that context is like oh they haven't authenticated they don't have an API key we do though because we use zapier so what I'm going to do is um please provide the answer again but we do not need to authenticate and you might be saying oh why don't you just take the answer how it is and then
[13:25] ignore that part because if you truly are going to speak to this API documentation for a lot of time let's try to get the best outputs possible so we don't have to deal with all this additional information essentially so what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna go ahead and do that and rephrase the answer out here and essentially now from here on out it understands okay because we're using zapier we don't need to authenticate access to this API let me just give you exactly what you want to know so we can get better answers when we do maybe more complex API calls and we don't want to get too confused so from here it says setup webhook
[13:56] understand that this is a version of a web hook essentially it's just re-authenticated right so from here though let me go ahead and see what it says right so it says okay based off this API you want to do a git okay git we're trying to grab data we're trying to grab the ID um they're trying to get the questions right then as you see here we have the link we're trying to get it from the URL come back over here put the URL in then as you see here let me see what it says so replace form ID with the ID of the form you want
[14:28] to fetch questions from okay so the next question actually I don't know what the form ID is I don't know what form ID is don't worry you can find it right here so whatever the context may be sometimes you have to call upon the previous uh input data now actually seems like they don't provide the form ID this is interesting so we might actually have to do another another custom call here let's see okay it does it does it does okay for a second I was like all right let's this is getting a little more complex let's do another thing where we have to do a whole other search query uh from here
[15:00] though let's go ahead and provide that so what we can do is let's go put it there there may be a situation where we have to query string parameters rather than how once it's structured here it really depends um let me go ahead and see if I can just find this here there we go just type in form ID let's hit continue here and test this action so we did get an error here and if you get an error what you can do and this is actually really good that I'm showing this live because you know you deal with web hooks you're going to deal with this right so what you want to do is you want to go to the underlying
[15:30] output that shows the air so in this context it says you're not authorized to use form ID in questions so two things pop in my head the first thing that pops in my head is okay do I need to be on a higher plan in order to access this call because some API calls require higher plans for specific platforms the second one is maybe there is additional authentication that I'm not aware about in this API so come in over here I went ahead and asked about this error and supposedly within this documentation we do need to obtain an API key and we do need to provide it so let's go ahead and
[16:01] do it it says go to my account let's go to API section my account uh see this is part of the problem too when you're dealing with a new platform you don't know where necessarily everything is okay API let's create a new key I'm gonna delete it so you can go in a copy if you want to but so we got all these different accesses you always want to do full access if you do a lot of complex stuff here so I'm gonna do that and then let's go ahead and jump back over here and I guess maybe we do need
[16:32] to authenticate this I mean this is I'm glad this happened honestly everything happens for a reason I'm glad this happened live so you can see essentially if you have an issue this is how you troubleshoot right so let's come back over here and essentially supposedly the header's name is going to be API key this can change sometimes it's authenticate and the bearer and Bearer tokens and stuff of that nature let's go ahead and see this works if this doesn't we'll find out why and there you go you just saw a troubleshoot live leave a like for the
[17:03] value but um yeah so essentially it works now uh as you see if you come down here I mean to be honest the structuring is a little a lot of data right um but you know I just need to see if I can find where it says success so uh but as you see I mean all the data's here right so the street address um these basically we were asking for the the underlying uh questions found in the form right right here newspaper so
[17:33] on so forth so now as you see we do not run into an error like we did before so I guess keep that a no that essentially sometimes even when you have authentication with zapier you need to provide additional authentication and you know obviously this makes a lot of sense I remember running into issues with Twitter's API where it wanted me to add like three different levels of authentication on top of already zapper's integration right so that's a pretty good lesson to learn right here so now we understand that even when you're integrated with zapper's backcam
[18:04] you still need to authenticate on some level and guess what we use Chad GB to troubleshoot it I mean I have never used API documentation from jaw form before so I wasn't even aware that this was actually necessary for their documentation this shows you the power of Chad gbt imagine the amount of forms I would have had it went through on stack overflow on their whole back end to understand that the simple thing that you needed to do was just provide further Authentication pretty cool stuff here all right so let's go ahead and show you another way
[18:35] we can go ahead and use this API documentation we're going to do the example of getting a submission ID we're going to simply just go ahead and put save and submit here as I said before provide as much context as possible so we're providing all this context providing the context here one thing I want to point out on top of what I've been pointing out that's pretty important here is you want to make sure Actually I don't even need to scroll down like that you want to make sure that when you are calling upon API documentation and you're using zapier you are under the right uh you know way of calling upon the API documentation
[19:06] we're not using uh all these other ones like c-sharp Ruby Java we're using C URLs this allows us to do https requests and so on from here though let's go ahead and change our scheduling event here we're going to change it to uh chat form when a new submission occurs here I know the data is provided again but I really just wanted to show you an example of how to leverage uh API initiation with jbt this is pretty powerful stuff here so we're going to hit continue selected
[19:37] record here we're gonna come back over here as you see here what we need to do is do a method of git so we're going to go ahead and grab this URL here and change this to get make sure we have the API key as you see here in theory they should be automatically added but it seems like with this documentation we still need to add that API key here and then essentially we can come back over to gbt here and provide the submission ID in the underlying URL here it's going to come right here we're going to do submission ID and essentially the point of this specific API call is to get uh
[20:07] get all the data associated with that ID and as you see here let's see if it works seems like of this type of calls it will tell us right away so success and we should get all the information we needed yes we did all right perfect another use case using chat DBT and API documentation all right so you have really learned how to use Chad gbt connected with the API documentation combine those two worlds and really start doing more complex stuff when it comes to automation let me know if you want to see a tutorial showing you how
[20:38] to do it if that API Quest beta isn't an option and we have to do it by straight raw rev hooking and setting authentication and you know that whole shipment let me know down the comments down below if you felt you learned something make sure to like the video it's completely free and it helps us here at Corbin AI if you want to learn more about artificial intelligence and how to leverage it for your personal and business live go with us and check us out here go and subscribe we do daily content really showing you how to leverage this new technology in a lot of different contexts I'm going to go ahead and Link a playlist here that just shows
[21:08] a bunch of different softwares you can start leveraging in your business we do a bunch of long form content on these topics so we're going to show Bob press voice flow make zapier just everything you need to know the fundamentals of you know how to get started but without further Ado I'll see you in the next video thanks for tuning in and yes surprise I'm an AI Avatar make sure to explore more here at web Cafe where we demystify AI for your personal and business life until next time