A tutorial on how I created Golossary. Check out the live streams here

This tutorial will show you how to create a simple HTTP API in Go. The API will accept text as part of the request and return JSON of the words and definitions. Behind the scenes, we will be making a call to a free dictionary API. I will guide you from "Hello World" all the way to a command line app you can use to generate a glossary.

What are the requirements?

• A basic understanding of Go.
• A properly configured install of Go.
• A basic understanding of how the web works.

What is the target audience?

• Someone wanting to learn how to build and consume API's in Go

When are the streaming sessions (streaming schedule)? Every Monday at 1900 (7:00PM) PST until the project is complete.

Session 1: Setting up main and calling the dictionary API

• Setting up the project
• Create Hello World
• Making a simple call to the dictionary API

Result: A program that can get JSON from the dictionary API and print it to the screen.

Session 1.5: Dictionary server was down so we made a weather API using OpenWeatherMap

• Used my goapi tool to generate the structs to parse JSON returned from Open Weather Map
• Created a command line program to make a call to OpenWeatherMap with our given lat and lon

Result A program that accepts a lattitude, longitude, and perfered tempature unit and returns the weather for that location.

Session 2: Parsing the response and abstracting our dictionary

• Use the Go standard library to parse JSON
• Create structs to parse the Pearson API
• Use a tool I made to simplify consuming API's (with explanation how it works)
• Creating an abstraction

Result: A program that can parse JSON from the dictionary and print only the definition to the screen.

Session 3: Parse a text file, call the API, and clean up code.

• Load a text file and parse the text from it
• Call the API for each unique word we find
• Add command line flags

Result: A program that can parse the text from a file and define all of the unique words in that file.

• Pearson Dictionaries
• Golang
• Great API for finding documentation