API Literacy · Level 1
What's an API
Mission briefing
Mission 2-A: The new pricing page shipped to staging looking perfect — except the prices are blank. Empty white space where numbers should be. The design is fine. Something underneath isn't talking to something else.
The layout's right, the data's just not arriving. That page asks an API for the prices — an API is basically a waiter. Your page tells the waiter what it wants, the waiter goes to the kitchen, and brings the data back. Right now the waiter's coming back empty-handed.
Every API has endpoints — specific addresses you ask for specific things. The prices live at /api/pricing. Think of an endpoint like a single item on the waiter's menu. You don't ask for 'everything,' you ask for one thing by name.
I open the network tab and watch the page load. There it is — a line that says GET /api/pricing. So it is asking. The asking is the part I didn't know had a name.
That line is the request — your page asking for something. What comes back is the response. The request went out fine. The response came back empty. So the problem's on our side, not the page's. Good — that means your design isn't broken.
The Backend Engineer asks: "The prices are blank on staging. Where do you point first?"