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How Does Solar Panel Technology Work?

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How Does Solar Panel Technology Work?

There is no way around it. It is a new age, and the time of fossil fuels is fading. New technologies have come to light that is environmentally sustainable and economical.

That being said, renewable energy is approached by many with a measure of skepticism. How can it derive energy from the sun, wind, or waves without adding expense to our lives?

The answer is that renewable energy has become a better option financially, environmentally, and economically. But still, for some, this ongoing question remains: how does solar panel technology work?

Renewable energy does indeed arrive at a cost premium. But it will quickly pay for itself in saved energy costs and lower carbon dioxide emissions.

To learn more about how solar panels work, continue reading.

The Basics of Solar Panel Science

Using photovoltaic cells, solar panel technology is an energy conversion system that turns sunlight into electricity. Photovoltaic cells are made from a semiconductor material, like silicon. This substance takes energy from the sun’s rays and turns it into electricity.

The electricity that is made is then used to power homes, businesses, and other buildings that are not connected to the traditional electric grid. In the past few years, solar panel technology has grown by leaps and bounds as people have become more aware of the need to stop using energy sources that aren’t sustainable.

Types of Solar Panels

Solar panel options are monocrystalline, polycrystalline, and thin film. Monocrystalline solar panels are constructed from cells cut from a single pure silicon crystal and are known for their black appearance.

Polycrystalline, or multi-crystalline, solar panels are created by melting various pieces of pure silicon. Their mottled blue hue distinguishes them.

Thin-film solar panels are made through vacuum deposition methods, where thin layers of photovoltaic material are put one at a time onto a substrate. This type of solar panel is known for its flexibility and typically has a brown or purple hue.

Components of Solar Panels and Their Purposes

Solar panels are composed of various parts that work together to generate electricity. These parts include:

Solar Cells

Solar Cells are made up of positive and negative layers of semi-conductive material, typically silicon, separated by a small gap. When the sun’s rays strike a solar cell, the electrons are freed from their atomic bonds and flow from the negative layer to the positive layer, creating an electric current.

The electricity a solar cell can generate is directly proportional to the sunlight hitting it, so the more sun a solar panel gets, the more energy it can produce. Solar cells will use sunlight for most of their life cycles. However, they rely on other materials, such as silver, to transport the electricity from the source to the final destination.

Encapsulant

Encapsulant is an essential component of a solar panel. Its job is to keep water, dust, and other outside things from getting into the cells.

Encapsulant also helps to improve how well the panel works. It keeps the solar cells in place so that sunlight can be turned into electricity.

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Encapsulants should be made of a solid material to protect the cells from moisture and physical shock. It must also be able to handle high and low temperatures. Because of this, high-grade ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) is the most common material used in the industry for encapsulants.

Glass Cover

A glass cover is responsible for protecting the interior parts of the board, which are incredibly delicate. Made of tempered glass, the glass cover stands firm against the external environment and is shatterproof and weather resistant.

It also serves as a long-term insulation system that ensures the solar cells remain in top shape. Besides this, the glass cover is also strongly reflective and efficiently reflects any sunlight that comes in contact with it. As a result, it boosts the energy output of solar panels.

Frame

A frame is used to keep the solar cells from moving around. This structure also helps keep the whole structure stable and ensures it can handle mechanical loads.

In addition, the frame also makes it easy to put the edge in the right place. The shape and size of the frame are important because it needs to fit nicely on the top.

Most frames are made of aluminum or steel, but some have also been made of carbon fiber and fiberglass. The frame has many uses, but it is essential because it protects fragile solar cells and ensures the system works at its best.

Backsheet

A solar panel’s back sheet is another important part. It is the layer that is right behind the cells that turn sunlight into electricity.

If the solar panel didn’t have a back sheet, the cells would be exposed to the elements, which could cause corrosion, temperature changes, and other problems. The back sheet also acts as a barrier to electrical current so that it doesn’t flow across the solar panel and cause possible harm.

Back sheets are usually made of a thin PET and fluoropolymer film. They also have UV protectants to keep the cells from getting old or breaking down. Backsheets can sometimes be of different colors to protect the panel from lousy lighting.

Bus Bars

Bus bars help link the cells together. Most of the time, they are made of aluminum and move electricity from the solar cells to the inverters and other load centers.

Bus bars handle high voltages and currents, so they are insulated. Solid electrical connections are made by soldering and crimping the cells, bus bars, and inverters. The large, thick bars have a lot of surface area, which helps the connection points get rid of heat.

Junction Box

A junction box connects the solar panel, the inverter, and any other electrical systems. Junction boxes protect the solar panel system’s wiring and circuits by putting them in a waterproof and weatherproof box. This makes it less likely that water or other outside factors will cause short circuits or other problems.

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They also make it easy to put together and keep up the solar panel system. The junction box also makes it easy to check on and change the output of the solar panel system. By putting sensors and metering units on the system, you can track how much energy it makes.

Inverter

Inverters take the electricity made by solar panels and change it from direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC), the kind of electricity we use in our homes and businesses. This change makes it easier to store and use the electricity that comes from solar panels.

Without an inverter, we can’t use the DC electricity from solar panels. Instead, we’d have to use more expensive and complicated systems to convert it.

1679595350 155 How Does Solar Panel Technology Work

The Benefits of Solar Panels

Solar panel technology offers many environmental and economic advantages.

Clean Energy

Clean energy is a source of electricity that is good for the environment and rarely runs out. It is mainly made from renewable sources like wind, sun, biomass, and geothermal energy. Solar panel technology has some benefits, and clean energy is one of them.

Solar energy is free, can be used repeatedly, doesn’t pollute or make harmful byproducts, and can be used even when other sources aren’t available. The light from the sun is turned into photovoltaic energy and then into electricity by solar panels.

This solar energy is very efficient, saves money, and doesn’t cause any pollution. As energy prices keep rising, clean energy from solar panels looks more and more appealing.

Reduced Energy Costs

Since solar energy is free and can be used repeatedly, using solar panels to make electricity helps lower energy costs. Solar energy can be used to power lights, appliances, and other electronic devices, among other things.

Replacing traditional power sources with solar panels can significantly reduce energy costs.

Improved Energy Independence

Solar panels are a reliable, renewable energy source. It gives you more energy and independence. Solar panels can make electricity in many places, even when there isn’t much light. This makes it easier for people to switch to this clean and cheap energy source.

Energy users can stop relying on traditional energy sources if they use solar energy. This makes energy independence a real possibility. As more and more people switch to solar energy, it becomes more and more possible to have better energy independence and more control over your power.

Increased Property Value

Homeowners who install solar panels benefit from increasing their property value. Solar energy is now seen as a valuable asset in real estate.

People who install solar panels on their property often find that their property value increases by about 4%. This is a great advantage for homeowners looking to sell their property, as it gives them more money to invest in other projects or investments.

Low Maintenance

Solar panel technology can use photovoltaic cells to turn the energy from the sun into an electric current. Solar panels are relatively inexpensive and don’t need much if any, maintenance once they’re set up.

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Solar panel systems can provide reliable electricity for decades with little maintenance if they are set up and kept in good shape. Also, if parts need to be replaced, you can easily find them at most hardware stores.

How Does Solar Panel Technology Work

The Cost of Solar Panel Technology

Home solar panels allow you to harness natural solar energy and turn it into electricity, saving money on your electricity bills and reducing the carbon footprint of your home.

Unfortunately, installing home solar panels is costly, with the average installation costing between $15,000 and $40,000, depending on the size and power of the home solar panel system.

System Number and Size

Since solar panels come in different sizes and can hold different amounts of power, smaller systems usually cost less than larger ones. The size of the system determines how much energy it can have. Since more extensive systems make more power and cost more, they are more efficient.

In general, the more complicated the installation process is and the bigger the system, the more it costs. Lastly, the number of panels needed to make the design can also affect the installation cost. More panels will make the total cost go up.

Panel Efficiency

More efficient solar panels can make more energy from the same amount of sunlight, which will lower the overall price of home solar panels. Higher levels of efficiency also cut costs related to setting up the system, like the need for more panels and infrastructure.

Also, high-efficiency panels need less space to be installed, which cuts down on the cost of the area you would have otherwise required. The efficiency of solar panels is a critical factor in figuring out how much they cost, which directly affects how much the whole system costs.

Installation Costs

Installing a solar system for a home involves not only the equipment cost but also the labor cost to get the systems up and running. Professional solar installation companies can often provide an accurate price estimate for the installation costs.

Still, these estimates can vary widely depending on the location, climate, and other specific project details. If you want to go now and find the lowest costs of solar panel options in your area, click here.

Go Solar Today

Solar panel technology is revolutionizing the way we think about energy production. As more people become aware of the advantages of solar energy, its efficient and cost-effective capabilities make it a great alternative to traditional energy sources.

By making the switch, we can help reduce emissions and do our part to live sustainably. Join the movement for clean energy today. Invest in solar-powered energy solutions for your home or business.

Was this article helpful to you? If so, check out our blog for more helpful information and resources.

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The Secret to Grow Your Business

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Social Media for E-Commerce: The Secret to Grow Your Business

In today’s digital world where over 50% of the world’s population (Hootsuite) is on social media, leveraging social media for e-commerce marketing is a great idea if you want to grow your business.

Consider this:

According to a 2021 Sprout Social’s the State of Social Media Investment survey, 34% of online consumers say they use social media to learn about products, services, and brands.

In the same survey, 33% said they use social media to discover new products, services, and brands.

Besides, according to Hootsuite’s Global State of Digital 2022 report mentioned above, users spend 2 hours and 27 minutes on average daily on social media:

1685505933 232 The Secret to Grow Your Business

What’s more?

In 2022, global sales via social media were estimated at $992 billion. Besides, social commerce sales are forecasted to reach approximately $2.9 trillion by 2026.

1685505934 837 The Secret to Grow Your Business

Seeing all these statistics, it’s clear that using social media for e-commerce is a great idea for promoting your business online.

Still not convinced?

Here are 4 reasons why you should use social media for e-commerce.

1. Helps You Drive Website Traffic

Using social commerce is a great idea if you want to drive traffic to your website.

As mentioned in the statistics above, consumers are using social media to learn about brands and discover new products and services.

E-commerce brands can leverage this huge social audience to drive more traffic to their websites.

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The good news is that social media for e-commerce is affordable. You can even drive traffic to your e-commerce website for free.

Here are handy social media tactics to drive traffic to your e-commerce website:

  • Research your e-commerce target audience.
  • Choose the right social media platforms that are relevant to your e-commerce business.
  • Post user-generated content.
  • Post valuable content consistently at the right time.
  • Collaborate with influencers.
  • Target your e-commerce audience with social media ads and PPC ads.
  • Utilize your social media and e-commerce data.
  • Follow the 80/20 rule.

2. Helps Create Brand Awareness

Social media is one of the most powerful channels for generating buzz around your brand, products, and services while managing business expenses, effectively track finances, and curtailing them thanks to a large number of users it commands.

Right social media strategy help you to increase the brand value and traffic on your ecommerce website.

According to a 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Trends report by HubSpot, 39% of marketers say their primary goal in using social media is to increase brand awareness:

1685505934 243 The Secret to Grow Your Business

By creating a robust social media marketing strategy, you can boost the visibility of your e-commerce business, thereby increasing brand recognition.

Here are practical tips to build brand awareness for your e-commerce store using social media:

  • Ensure you’re using social media networks that your target customers are using.
  • Create an advertising budget and stick to it to handle business finance better.
  • Demonstrate your brand’s personality and values.
  • Deliver valuable content consistently and engage with your audiences.
  • Take advantage of trends and breaking news.
  • Always track and measure progress.
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3. Improves Conversions

The US retail social commerce sales are projected to reach $79.64 billion by 2025:

1685505934 910 The Secret to Grow Your Business

There’s no doubt that social media marketing can help e-commerce brands improve their conversion rates.

Thus, creating a powerful social media strategy can help you improve conversions for your e-commerce business. In fact, with features like smart links, you can easily drive B2B sales on platforms like LinkedIn too.

To help boost their conversions, Walmart partnered with a US singer Jason Derulo in a live shopping event for which the singer shared a link on Twitter.

1685505934 210 The Secret to Grow Your Business

Here is how to use social media to boost e-commerce conversions:

  • Share user-generated content to empower your customers.
  • Improve conversions with influencer marketing.
  • Use trending and relevant hashtags.
  • Drive authentic engagement.
  • Build deeper trust and loyalty with your audience.
  • Make it easier for customers to shop for products directly on social media.
  • Leverage social media analytics.

4. Provide Customer Service

Take a look at how lululemon responded to a subscriber’s question on Twitter.

The e-commerce brand provided the subscriber with a means to reach out to customer support. And they did so quickly too.

1685505935 345 The Secret to Grow Your Business

These days, the most popular social media platforms allow customers to purchase products directly without leaving the platform. These platforms work as the most digital marketing tools for the marketers and business owners.

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This makes social media an important platform for customer service for your e-commerce business.

Here are useful tips to use social media for e-commerce customer support:

  • Reply to all questions, comments, concerns, and feedback.
  • Know what to address in public or private.
  • Address crucial matters as soon as possible.
  • Respond positively to both negative and positive feedback.

Conclusion

There are many incredible benefits of using social media for e-commerce marketing.

So, if you’re not using social media to promote your brand, products, and services online then you’re missing out on a lot of huge business opportunities. In fact, you’re giving your competition the edge.

The key lies in leveraging the right social media marketing strategies and promoting your e-commerce store using them. The right combination can give your brand a lift. So, go ahead and start leveraging these strategies.

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Mnemonic Content Strategy Framework Can Spark Conversations

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Mnemonic Content Strategy Framework Can Spark Conversations

I’m a sucker for mnemonics.

In fact, I remember how to spell it by “Me Nomics Except M nOt N In Case Spelling.”

OK, that’s a lie. But I daresay ChatGPT could never come up with that.

Anyway, one of my favorite idea-remembering devices comes from my hero Philip Kotler. He reduces his perfect definition of marketing to CCDVTP – Create and Communicate Value to a Target at a Profit.”

I lean on that mnemonic device when anyone asks about the best definition of marketing’s function in a business.

However, what makes a great mnemonic like CCDVTP is that each word the letter represents has something deeper behind it. So it’s not just six words – it’s six operating concepts with definitions made easier to remember by just remembering how the six words go together.

A mnemonic device for content strategy

I’ve written about the standard framework for developing or strengthening your content strategy. It’s one of the core modules of a CMI University course. It can be a lot to take in because the framework’s concepts and definitions need to be explained in varying levels of detail.

So, recently, I created a mnemonic device to use in my explanation – the 5 Cs: Coordination and Collaboration produce Content before Containers and make Channels measurable.

5Cs of #ContentStrategy: Coordination and Collaboration produce Content before Containers and make Channels measurable via @Robert_Rose @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

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It works as a core or high-level definition of a content marketing strategy. But, like Kotler’s CCDVTP, it also lets me drill into the framework’s five concepts or pressure points. Let me explain:

Coordination

The primary purpose of a content strategy is to develop and manage core responsibilities and processes. In addition, they allow marketing to build and continually assess resource allocation, skill sets, and charters the marketing team needs to make content a business strength.

Most businesses that lack this C struggle with content as a repeatable or measurable approach. As I’ve said, content is everyone’s job in many businesses and no one’s strategy. A key element of a content strategy is a focus on building coordination into how ideas become content and ultimately generate business value.

Most businesses that lack coordination struggle with making #content a repeatable and measurable approach, says @Robert_Rose. Click To Tweet

Collaboration

In many businesses, content is developed in silos, especially with sales and marketing. Sometimes, it may be divided by channel – web, email, and sales teams don’t work together. In other cases, it may be by function – PR, sales, marketing, brand, and demand generation have different approaches.

Content is a team sport. The practitioners’ job is not to be good at content but to enable the business to be good at content. Scalability only happens through an effective, collaborative approach to transforming ideas into content and content into experiences.

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Content before containers

As marketers, you are trained to think container first and content second. You start with “I need a web page,” “I need an email,” or “I need a blog post.” Then, your next step is to create content specific to that container.

If you start with “I need a blog post” and then create the #content idea, you’re doing it wrong, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

I can’t tell you how many big ideas I’ve seen trapped in the context of a blog post simply because that was how it was conceived. I’ve also seen the reverse – small ideas spun into an e-book or white paper because someone wanted that digital asset.

This pressure point requires reverse thinking about your business’ process to create content. The first step must be to create fully formed ideas (big and small) and then (and only then) figure out which containers and how many might be appropriate.

My test to see whether marketing teams put content before containers is to look at their request or intake form. Does it say, “What kind of content do you need?” and list options, such as email, white paper, e-book, and brochure?  Or does it say, “Please explain the idea or story you’d like to develop more fully?”

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Channels

I purposely put channels last because they express the kind of content you create. Channels dictate how you ultimately reach the customers and how the customers will access your content. Which or how many of your content channels do you treat as a media company would?

Is your corporate blog truly centered on the audience, or is it centered on your product or brand? Is it a repository where you put everything from news about your product and how to use it to what to expect in the future and how other customers use your product?

What about your social media, website, newsletters, and thought leadership center? What is their purpose and editorial strategy? How do you evolve your content products as your audience changes as a media company does? Without a clear strategy for every channel, the measurement of content becomes guesswork at best.

When you examine your strategic approach to content, I hope the 5Cs mnemonic device helps you have those necessary conversations around coordination, collaboration, content before containers, and channels with the stakeholders in your business.

It’s your story. Tell it well.

Subscribe to workday or weekly CMI emails to get Rose-Colored Glasses in your inbox each week. 

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute



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The Moz Links API: An Introduction

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The Moz Links API: An Introduction

What exactly IS an API? They’re those things that you copy and paste long strange codes into Screaming Frog for links data on a Site Crawl, right?

I’m here to tell you there’s so much more to them than that – if you’re willing to take just a few little steps. But first, some basics.

What’s an API?

API stands for “application programming interface”, and it’s just the way of… using a thing. Everything has an API. The web is a giant API that takes URLs as input and returns pages.

But special data services like the Moz Links API have their own set of rules. These rules vary from service to service and can be a major stumbling block for people taking the next step.

When Screaming Frog gives you the extra links columns in a crawl, it’s using the Moz Links API, but you can have this capability anywhere. For example, all that tedious manual stuff you do in spreadsheet environments can be automated from data-pull to formatting and emailing a report.

If you take this next step, you can be more efficient than your competitors, designing and delivering your own SEO services instead of relying upon, paying for, and being limited by the next proprietary product integration.

GET vs. POST

Most APIs you’ll encounter use the same data transport mechanism as the web. That means there’s a URL involved just like a website. Don’t get scared! It’s easier than you think. In many ways, using an API is just like using a website.

As with loading web pages, the request may be in one of two places: the URL itself, or in the body of the request. The URL is called the “endpoint” and the often invisibly submitted extra part of the request is called the “payload” or “data”. When the data is in the URL, it’s called a “query string” and indicates the “GET” method is used. You see this all the time when you search:

https://www.google.com/search?q=moz+links+api <-- GET method 

When the data of the request is hidden, it’s called a “POST” request. You see this when you submit a form on the web and the submitted data does not show on the URL. When you hit the back button after such a POST, browsers usually warn you against double-submits. The reason the POST method is often used is that you can fit a lot more in the request using the POST method than the GET method. URLs would get very long otherwise. The Moz Links API uses the POST method.

Making requests

A web browser is what traditionally makes requests of websites for web pages. The browser is a type of software known as a client. Clients are what make requests of services. More than just browsers can make requests. The ability to make client web requests is often built into programming languages like Python, or can be broken out as a standalone tool. The most popular tools for making requests outside a browser are curl and wget.

We are discussing Python here. Python has a built-in library called URLLIB, but it’s designed to handle so many different types of requests that it’s a bit of a pain to use. There are other libraries that are more specialized for making requests of APIs. The most popular for Python is called requests. It’s so popular that it’s used for almost every Python API tutorial you’ll find on the web. So I will use it too. This is what “hitting” the Moz Links API looks like:

response = requests.post(endpoint, data=json_string, auth=auth_tuple)

Given that everything was set up correctly (more on that soon), this will produce the following output:

{'next_token': 'JYkQVg4s9ak8iRBWDiz1qTyguYswnj035nqrQ1oIbW96IGJsb2dZgGzDeAM7Rw==',
 'results': [{'anchor_text': 'moz',
              'external_pages': 7162,
              'external_root_domains': 2026}]}

This is JSON data. It’s contained within the response object that was returned from the API. It’s not on the drive or in a file. It’s in memory. So long as it’s in memory, you can do stuff with it (often just saving it to a file).

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If you wanted to grab a piece of data within such a response, you could refer to it like this:

response['results'][0]['external_pages']

This says: “Give me the first item in the results list, and then give me the external_pages value from that item.” The result would be 7162.

NOTE: If you’re actually following along executing code, the above line won’t work alone. There’s a certain amount of setup we’ll do shortly, including installing the requests library and setting up a few variables. But this is the basic idea.

JSON

JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. It’s a way of representing data in a way that’s easy for humans to read and write. It’s also easy for computers to read and write. It’s a very common data format for APIs that has somewhat taken over the world since the older ways were too difficult for most people to use. Some people might call this part of the “restful” API movement, but the much more difficult XML format is also considered “restful” and everyone seems to have their own interpretation. Consequently, I find it best to just focus on JSON and how it gets in and out of Python.

Python dictionaries

I lied to you. I said that the data structure you were looking at above was JSON. Technically it’s really a Python dictionary or dict datatype object. It’s a special kind of object in Python that’s designed to hold key/value pairs. The keys are strings and the values can be any type of object. The keys are like the column names in a spreadsheet. The values are like the cells in the spreadsheet. In this way, you can think of a Python dict as a JSON object. For example here’s creating a dict in Python:

my_dict = {
    "name": "Mike",
    "age": 52,
    "city": "New York"
}

And here is the equivalent in JavaScript:

var my_json = {
    "name": "Mike",
    "age": 52,
    "city": "New York"
}

Pretty much the same thing, right? Look closely. Key-names and string values get double-quotes. Numbers don’t. These rules apply consistently between JSON and Python dicts. So as you might imagine, it’s easy for JSON data to flow in and out of Python. This is a great gift that has made modern API-work highly accessible to the beginner through a tool that has revolutionized the field of data science and is making inroads into marketing, Jupyter Notebooks.

Flattening data

But beware! As data flows between systems, it’s not uncommon for the data to subtly change. For example, the JSON data above might be converted to a string. Strings might look exactly like JSON, but they’re not. They’re just a bunch of characters. Sometimes you’ll hear it called “serializing”, or “flattening”. It’s a subtle point, but worth understanding as it will help with one of the largest stumbling blocks with the Moz Links (and most JSON) APIs.

Objects have APIs

Actual JSON or dict objects have their own little APIs for accessing the data inside of them. The ability to use these JSON and dict APIs goes away when the data is flattened into a string, but it will travel between systems more easily, and when it arrives at the other end, it will be “deserialized” and the API will come back on the other system.

Data flowing between systems

This is the concept of portable, interoperable data. Back when it was called Electronic Data Interchange (or EDI), it was a very big deal. Then along came the web and then XML and then JSON and now it’s just a normal part of doing business.

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If you’re in Python and you want to convert a dict to a flattened JSON string, you do the following:

import json

my_dict = {
    "name": "Mike",
    "age": 52,
    "city": "New York"
}

json_string = json.dumps(my_dict)

…which would produce the following output:

'{"name": "Mike", "age": 52, "city": "New York"}'

This looks almost the same as the original dict, but if you look closely you can see that single-quotes are used around the entire thing. Another obvious difference is that you can line-wrap real structured data for readability without any ill effect. You can’t do it so easily with strings. That’s why it’s presented all on one line in the above snippet.

Such stringifying processes are done when passing data between different systems because they are not always compatible. Normal text strings on the other hand are compatible with almost everything and can be passed on web-requests with ease. Such flattened strings of JSON data are frequently referred to as the request.

Anatomy of a request

Again, here’s the example request we made above:

response = requests.post(endpoint, data=json_string, auth=auth_tuple)

Now that you understand what the variable name json_string is telling you about its contents, you shouldn’t be surprised to see this is how we populate that variable:

 data_dict = {
    "target": "moz.com/blog",
    "scope": "page",
    "limit": 1
}

json_string = json.dumps(data_dict)

…and the contents of json_string looks like this:

'{"target": "moz.com/blog", "scope": "page", "limit": 1}'

This is one of my key discoveries in learning the Moz Links API. This is in common with countless other APIs out there but trips me up every time because it’s so much more convenient to work with structured dicts than flattened strings. However, most APIs expect the data to be a string for portability between systems, so we have to convert it at the last moment before the actual API-call occurs.

Pythonic loads and dumps

Now you may be wondering in that above example, what a dump is doing in the middle of the code. The json.dumps() function is called a “dumper” because it takes a Python object and dumps it into a string. The json.loads() function is called a “loader” because it takes a string and loads it into a Python object.

The reason for what appear to be singular and plural options are actually binary and string options. If your data is binary, you use json.load() and json.dump(). If your data is a string, you use json.loads() and json.dumps(). The s stands for string. Leaving the s off means binary.

Don’t let anybody tell you Python is perfect. It’s just that its rough edges are not excessively objectionable.

Assignment vs. equality

For those of you completely new to Python or programming in general, what we’re doing when we hit the API is called an assignment. The result of requests.post() is being assigned to the variable named response.

response = requests.post(endpoint, data=json_string, auth=auth_tuple)

We are using the = sign to assign the value of the right side of the equation to the variable on the left side of the equation. The variable response is now a reference to the object that was returned from the API. Assignment is different from equality. The == sign is used for equality.

# This is assignment:
a = 1  # a is now equal to 1

# This is equality:
a == 1  # True, but relies that the above line has been executed

The POST method

response = requests.post(endpoint, data=json_string, auth=auth_tuple)

The requests library has a function called post() that takes 3 arguments. The first argument is the URL of the endpoint. The second argument is the data to send to the endpoint. The third argument is the authentication information to send to the endpoint.

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Keyword parameters and their arguments

You may notice that some of the arguments to the post() function have names. Names are set equal to values using the = sign. Here’s how Python functions get defined. The first argument is positional both because it comes first and also because there’s no keyword. Keyworded arguments come after position-dependent arguments. Trust me, it all makes sense after a while. We all start to think like Guido van Rossum.

def arbitrary_function(argument1, name=argument2):
    # do stuff

The name in the above example is called a “keyword” and the values that come in on those locations are called “arguments”. Now arguments are assigned to variable names right in the function definition, so you can refer to either argument1 or argument2 anywhere inside this function. If you’d like to learn more about the rules of Python functions, you can read about them here.

Setting up the request

Okay, so let’s let you do everything necessary for that success assured moment. We’ve been showing the basic request:

response = requests.post(endpoint, data=json_string, auth=auth_tuple)

…but we haven’t shown everything that goes into it. Let’s do that now. If you’re following along and don’t have the requests library installed, you can do so with the following command from the same terminal environment from which you run Python:

pip install requests

Often times Jupyter will have the requests library installed already, but in case it doesn’t, you can install it with the following command from inside a Notebook cell:

!pip install requests

And now we can put it all together. There’s only a few things here that are new. The most important is how we’re taking 2 different variables and combining them into a single variable called AUTH_TUPLE. You will have to get your own ACCESSID and SECRETKEY from the Moz.com website.

The API expects these two values to be passed as a Python data structure called a tuple. A tuple is a list of values that don’t change. I find it interesting that requests.post() expects flattened strings for the data parameter, but expects a tuple for the auth parameter. I suppose it makes sense, but these are the subtle things to understand when working with APIs.

Here’s the full code:

import json
import pprint
import requests

# Set Constants
ACCESSID = "mozscape-1234567890"  # Replace with your access ID
SECRETKEY = "1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef"  # Replace with your secret key
AUTH_TUPLE = (ACCESSID, SECRETKEY)

# Set Variables
endpoint = "https://lsapi.seomoz.com/v2/anchor_text"
data_dict = {"target": "moz.com/blog", "scope": "page", "limit": 1}
json_string = json.dumps(data_dict)

# Make the Request
response = requests.post(endpoint, data=json_string, auth=AUTH_TUPLE)

# Print the Response
pprint(response.json())

…which outputs:

{'next_token': 'JYkQVg4s9ak8iRBWDiz1qTyguYswnj035nqrQ1oIbW96IGJsb2dZgGzDeAM7Rw==',
 'results': [{'anchor_text': 'moz',
              'external_pages': 7162,
              'external_root_domains': 2026}]}

Using all upper case for the AUTH_TUPLE variable is a convention many use in Python to indicate that the variable is a constant. It’s not a requirement, but it’s a good idea to follow conventions when you can.

You may notice that I didn’t use all uppercase for the endpoint variable. That’s because the anchor_text endpoint is not a constant. There are a number of different endpoints that can take its place depending on what sort of lookup we wanted to do. The choices are:

  1. anchor_text

  2. final_redirect

  3. global_top_pages

  4. global_top_root_domains

  5. index_metadata

  6. link_intersect

  7. link_status

  8. linking_root_domains

  9. links

  10. top_pages

  11. url_metrics

  12. usage_data

And that leads into the Jupyter Notebook that I prepared on this topic located here on Github. With this Notebook you can extend the example I gave here to any of the 12 available endpoints to create a variety of useful deliverables, which will be the subject of articles to follow.

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