Mastering APIs with Python
A complete path from API beginner to production-capable Python developer.
What's inside
From your first request to a deployed production API
Thirty chapters in four parts. Each part ends with something you built and can show.
Foundations & Core Skills
How modern applications talk to each other. Your first API call, JSON, authentication, API keys, error handling, and validation. Ends with a production-ready weather CLI: retries, logging, and input validation included.
Chapters 14–20Full-Stack Integration
OAuth 2.0, databases with SQLite, and Flask. You build the Spotify Music Time Machine: a real web app with login, stored listening history, a dashboard, a test suite, and a live deployed URL a recruiter can click.
Chapters 21–30Professional & Production
Webhooks, async, file uploads, PostgreSQL, and building your own REST API with FastAPI. Then the part most books skip: Docker, AWS deployment, CI/CD, and production operations, ending in a multi-source analytics platform.
Built for developers who are past "hello world"
A developer who can write basic Python and wants to cross the gap between tutorials and production work, especially one assembling a portfolio for job applications. The interview framing throughout, with every architectural decision rehearsed as something you will defend to a hiring manager, is a genuine differentiator, and is scrupulously accurate. Impatient experienced developers will want to skim the first two beginner chapters.
You read, you type, you run real code against real APIs (OpenWeather, Spotify, NewsAPI, GitHub), and every part ends with a project for your portfolio.
A good fit if you
- Know basic Python and want to build things that survive contact with the real internet
- Want portfolio projects with OAuth, databases, testing, and cloud deployment, not todo apps
- Prefer reading and typing code over watching videos
Not a fit if you
- Have never written Python before (learn the basics first, then come back)
- Want a frontend or data-science curriculum; this is backend and APIs throughout
The author
Written and supported by one developer, not a content farm
I'm Simon O'Connor, an Irish software developer. I built and ran every project in this book myself, and the support inbox is mine. The free guides on this site are cut from the same material, so you can judge the teaching before you spend a cent.