How the Web Works - sparkbox/fundamentals-cohort GitHub Wiki

How a Url Becomes a Web Page | Web APIs

📓 How a Url Becomes a Web Page

Learning Objectives

• Answer the question "How does a URL become a web page?"
• Understand the anatomy of a URL
• Explain the Core Principals of HTTP
• Understand commonly used HTTP status codes
• Confidently read and modify .htaccess files

Resources

• An Overview of HTTP article by MDN
• HTTP Tutorial article by Tutorials Point
• The Ultimate Guide to .htaccess files article by Tuts+
• HTTP The Definitive Guide on the Sparkbox Bookshelf
• Anatomy of a URL Diagram
• Flash Cards on Quizlet

Practice

• Experiment on messwithdns.net
• Dissect an .htaccess file and journal your findings. Sparkbox.com’s .htaccess has a lot of interesting things happening.

📓 Web APIs

Learning Objectives

Resources

• Fetch API

Tools

Useful tools for debugging HTTP requests/responses

• PostMan is a GUI based client for interacting with API calls.
• curl is a terminal-bbased HTTP client. While not as user-friendly as Postman, it's much more power, scriptable, and available by default in my environments (run which curl, it's probably already installed on your machine).
• Axios is a popular JS library for async HTTP requests. It offers a higher-level, easier to use API than Fetch API.

Practice

• Choose an API from this list of public APIs. Interact with it using curl, Postman, fetch API or axios.