Before we can learn how to retrieve data from the Foursquare database, we need to create a developer account. Let me walk you through the process of doing that. So let's go to Foursquare.com and click on the Developer tab on the top right corner of the page. This will take us to the developer page. Now click on Create a Account. Here, we don't have an account yet, so click on Sign up for Foursquare. Now on this page, go ahead and fill in your personal information, and once you're done hit the Sign up button. Congratulations! Your developer account is now created. On May 31st of 2018, Foursquare updated their API, and unlike before, now there are some limitations on how many calls you can make to the API. So when you create a developer account, the default type is the sandbox account, with 950 regular calls per day and 50 premium calls per day, and you can retrieve only one photo and one tip per venue. I'll explain the different types of calls in a minute but let's first go ahead and create a new app so we can start making calls to the API and retrieving data. Click on create a new app. Let's name it coursera-capstone-project and give it the URL www.courseracapstoneproject.com. Normally, if you're leveraging the Foursquare data in a real app that you're building, then you would type it here, but since we're not building any app then it doesn't really matter what URL we use. Once you're done, check the two boxes and click continue. The next step is to choose your account here, in case you're not very happy with the features you get with the default sandbox account. Foursquare now has three developer verified account tiers and you will get to know why I said verified in a second. There is the personal account which is still free, and with it you get 99,500 regular calls and 500 premium calls. That is actually 100 times more calls than the default sandbox account. You'll also get access to over 105 million venues or points of interest, but you still only get two photos and two tips per venue, which is just one more photo and tip compared to the sandbox account. Now the other two tiers are for companies and enterprises so they don't really apply to us. Now if you want to proceed, choose the personal account and click continue. The reason why I said verified account in the previous slide is because to be able to upgrade to the personal account you will need to provide your credit card information, but it won't be charged and will only be used for verification purposes. This step is really optional and you don't have to fill in your credit card information if you are not comfortable with that, but just be mindful of how many calls you can make with the sandbox account if you end up using the API for any personal projects. If you decide to upgrade to a personal account, fill in your credit card information and click verify. If you don't wish to upgrade simply click on "Return to My Apps" and that's it. You can now see the app that you just created and your Foursquare API credentials: your Client ID and your Client Secret. You will need to pass these credentials every time you make a call to the API. Now what is a regular call and the premium call? The Foursquare API is really very well documented so if you go to Docs, it will take you to the documentation overview page. You can click on API and then endpoints overview, and here you will find the different groups and endpoints available and whether each endpoint falls under a regular or a premium call. So to search for coffee shops around you for example, your call to the API would be considered a regular call. You would use the search endpoint to search for coffee shops around you. This is considered a regular call but learning more about Kaffe 1668 from the previous video, would be considered a premium call. So you would either use the details endpoint which is considered a premium call or if you want to get the venue's tips or the hours or the menu or any links, these are all considered a premium call. Please bookmark this page as you will find it very useful when working with the Foursquare API. At this point you should be ready to start making calls to the Foursquare API. In the next video, I will show you how you can start communicating with the Foursquare database and making calls to its API to retrieve location data. I'll see you in the next video.
