Training activity information
Details
Retrieve and parse data from a REST application programming interface (API)
Type
Developmental training activity (DTA)
Evidence requirements
Evidence the activity has been undertaken by the trainee​.
Reflection on the activity at one or more time points after the event including learning from the activity and/or areas of the trainees practice for development.
An action plan to implement learning and/or to address skills or knowledge gaps identified.
Reflective practice guidance
The guidance below is provided to support reflection at different time points, providing you with questions to aid you to reflect for this training activity. They are provided for guidance and should not be considered as a mandatory checklist. Trainees should not be expected to provide answers to each of the guidance questions listed.
Before action
- What knowledge of REST APIs, data structures and data parsing before starting?
- What specific skills in data retrieval and manipulation using APIs and parsing data do you hope to gain? What aspects of this task are new to you?
- Will you review documentation for the API you will be using, or practice parsing data? Have you discussed this activity with your training officer? What challenges do you foresee in accessing or manipulating the data? How do you feel about working with APIs and these programming languages?
In action
- What steps are you taking to retrieve the data from the API? How are you choosing which libraries or functions to use for data manipulation and parsing? Are you encountering any issues with the API connection or data format?
- Are you successfully retrieving the data? Are you able to parse the data as expected? Are there any errors or warnings occurring during the process? What adjustments are you making to your code as you go?
- If you encounter difficulties withsome libraries, are you considering alternative approaches in the other? Are you looking up documentation or examples to overcome challenges?
On action
- Summarise the process of retrieving data from the API. What were the key steps involved in manipulating and parsing the data?
- What skills in using REST APIs did you develop or improve? What new techniques or approaches did you learn for data parsing? Were there any unexpected challenges encountered during data retrieval or manipulation? What did you learn from these challenges? How did your actions during the activity (your ‘reflect-in-action’) influence the final dataframes you created? How does the ability to retrieve and manipulate data in this way relate to the requirements for post-programme practice in Clinical Bioinformatics?
- What areas for continued development in API interaction or data parsing have been identified? How can you apply the techniques learned in this activity to future data analysis tasks? What specific actions or ‘next steps’ will you take to further develop your skills in this area? What support or resources might you need to further develop your abilities in API data retrieval and data parsing?
Beyond action
- Have you since had to retrieve data from APIs in other contexts? How did your experience with this DTA inform your approach?
- In future projects, how might your ability to retrieve and structure data programmatically contribute to more complex analyses?
Relevant learning outcomes
| # | Outcome |
|---|---|
| # 1 |
Outcome
Arrange and store data for programmatic analysis. |