u/RevolutionaryAd8906 , I appreciate your good intentions in creating a beginner-friendly tutorial like this. JSON is a core technology that anyone working with modern APIs should understand, and it's important to make learning accessible for beginners. That said, your mindset of setting up JSON to be thought of as a "database" is perhaps sub-optimal ... while it's useful to teach data persistence early on, positioning JSON as a database can set beginners up for struggles down the line. I think you know this, and I see where you're going with it, but fundamentally it sets up a paradigm in the heads of new programmers that is misaligned with best practices. JSON files are easy to use and understand, making them great for small projects or single-user applications. Maybe a to-do list or managing simple configuration settings, storing user preferences, tracking small collections (e.g., book or movie lists). JSON works well if the scale is very limited. The progression from using JSON for data storage to interacting with APIs is logical and effective. However the limitations of JSON are very quickly apparent: Scalability: JSON is not designed for large datasets (like managing a hotel............. maybe suggest a different example in your HOW TO?) Performance degrades significantly with thousands of records, as the entire file must be read and written each time. RAM also becomes a limiting factor. Beyond a few thousand records, load and save times will noticeably degrade, especially with detailed records. Concurrency: JSON does not handle concurrent access. When multiple users or processes interact with the data, conflicts and errors are likely. Traditional databases manage this with record locking, transactions, and ACID compliance. Data Integrity and Security: JSON lacks built-in features for enforcing data types, constraints, or relationships. Storing sensitive information in plain-text JSON without encryption is risky (like the hotel guests credit card numbers and addresses...??) Databases like SQLite or even NoSQL options like MongoDB help mitigate these issues. Integrating databases from the beginning with new programming students can be valuable and I would argue worth doing. It seems to me you're kicking a can down the line and instilling a bad notion in their heads that they can use JSON as a flat file database. SQLite, for instance, requires minimal setup and offers skills that are more transferable to complex projects. It introduces concepts like relationships, querying, and data normalization, which can save a lot of headaches later on. I wonder if there's a middle ground where you introduce data persistence with JSON, and then transition to something like SQLite or an ORM in short order? This would help beginners avoid the pitfalls of using JSON beyond its intended use while still learning important concepts in a manageable way. Anyway ... not trying to criticize too harshly, but I think this is a misguided way to teach what JSON is all about. More on reddit.com

Looks good. Considered discussing dataclasses/pydantic with json? I found that these go well together More on reddit.com

Nice article. One minor, super-pedantic nit-pick: you keep using the words "JSON object", when you don't really mean that. A "JSON object" is merely one particular type a JSON string or text can hold, as defined by RFC7159 and its update RFC8259 , ECMA262 , ECMA404 , W3C, and various other standards. So you keep describing how to convert to/from "JSON object", when what you're really doing is converting to/from JSON string (which are also python strings) - and those strings actually are of JSON arrays in your examples, not JSON objects. The arrays happen to contain JSON objects inside the array. So for example this: json.dumps() takes in a Python data type and returns a JSON object. json.loads() takes in a JSON object and returns a Python data type. ...isn't actually true. For example just the two characters 42 is a perfectly valid JSON string, of just a JSON number type. Python's json.dumps() will accept a python int of 42 and convert it to a string. It will then take that serialized python/JSON string and convert it back to a simple python int, using json.loads(). There is no JSON object involved whatsoever. Again, I know I'm being pedantic. And I don't mean to criticize - the article's fine overall. I just get triggered by some minor details sometimes. :) More on reddit.com

Using an API just comes down to making a request to the right end-point (e.g. /api/v1/me), which then returns data. Most of the time this data is in either JSON or XML format.

Now in order to view that end-point (/api/v1/me) you need to be authenticated via OAuth, which is a whole separate process. (But also including making requests by sending the right data back and forth.)

Now to make it easy, you can just use PRAW. Which has a small tutorial on their website. :)

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