Networking Concept List

Concept List

• Web service — a software application that enables the communication of data over a network
• API (Application Program Interface) — a set of methods that are specialized for a purpose; many web services are also referred to as APIs or “network” APIs
• JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) — a data format used frequently to communicate data over a network
• Parameters (in a URL) — a value specified in a URL usually in the format of “parameter=value”
• ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) — a simple way of representing characters in a computer
• URL escaping/encoding — a mechanism for ensuring that all characters in a URL are valid ASCII characters
• API key — a value distributed by an API provider that uniquely identifies applications using it service
• URLRequest — represents a configurable URL that can specify properties such as the HTTP method type
• Serialization — converting an object into a stream of bytes; this is often done to send an object over the network so that it can be recreated somewhere else
• Deserialization — converting a stream of bytes into an object; the opposite of serialization
• JSONSerialization — a class used to convert bytes of JSON data into objects or vice versa
• NSDictionary — Objective-C’s version of a Dictionary; sometimes we must use it in Swift when working with Objective-C APIs
• NSArray — Objective-C’s version of an Array; sometimes we must use it in Swift when working with Objective-C APIs

• Authentication — ensuring someone’s identity (i.e. “we’ve confirmed this user is indeed Jarrod Parkes”)
• Authorization — providing someone access to something (i.e. “this user is allowed to post ratings for movies”)
• TheMovieDB (TMDB) — the web service we’ll use in this lesson; if you see the abbreviation TMDB, we’re referring to TheMovieDB
• HTTP body — part of an HTTP request that allows us to pass parameters without having to pass them in the URL
• HTTP POST request — a type of HTTP request where a client submits data to a server for processing
• HTTP headers — additional parameters than can be sent in an HTTP request that specify how the request should operate
• Authorization flow — a term used to refer to the steps necessary to authenticate and authorize a user
• Authorization standards — a commonly used authorization flow; we will not use a specific standard in this course, but we will use a flow that is similar to the authorization standard called OAuth
• Domain — (basic definition) what allows a client to find and connect to a server
• Subdomain — an extension to a domain that allows a server to organize specific resources together

from Udacity iOS Developer Nanodegree