Most of the time, a data engineer is responsible for working with APIs to collect data and create datasets according to the needs of the business. Below is the process you can follow for the task of data collection with an API:

1. Define Data Requirements:

   • Clearly outline what data is needed, the purpose of the data collection, and how it will be used in your analysis or modeling.

2. Read API Documentation:

   • Understand what data you can get, in what format, and how to access it.

3. Register for API Access:

   • Sign up if necessary to obtain API keys.

4. Use Suitable Programming Languages:

   • Use languages that support HTTP requests, like Python, with libraries such as requests or urllib for making API calls.

5. Develop a Script:

   • Write a script that makes requests to the API endpoints you identified.
   • Handle pagination and iterate over pages of data if the API splits the data across multiple responses.

6. Parse and Convert Data:

   • Code the script to parse the received data (usually in JSON or XML format) and convert it into a usable format like a DataFrame in Python using Pandas.

In this project, I will be using the Spotify API to collect real-time music data from Spotify and create a dataset of music with their features and popularity.

Now, follow the process mentioned below to sign up for using the API for data collection:

1. Create a Spotify Developer account at Spotify for Developers
2. Go to the Spotify developer dashboard at developer
3. Click Create an app
4. Choose an App name and App description
5. Tick the Developer Terms of Service checkbox
6. Click Create
7. Click Edit Settings
8. Go to Application Settings
9. Copy the Client ID and Client Secret NOTE : If it asks for a website, you can use statso.io if you don’t have a website.

• Now, install Spotify’s official Python API known as Spotipy. You can install it on your Python environment by executing the command below on your terminal or command prompt: pip install spotipy
• To get the playlist ID of any other playlist on Spotify, just copy the link of the playlist and below is how to identify the playlist ID from the URL of the playlist:

This is the method to collect data from an API using Python. Leveraging an API for data collection is an efficient way to acquire real-time or historical data, which can be utilized for data analysis, machine learning models, or various data-driven applications.