What is an Endpoint?

Question

Come on guys :) We could do it simpler, by examples:

/this-is-an-endpoint
/another/endpoint
/some/other/endpoint
/login
/accounts
/cart/items

and when put under a domain, it would look like:

https://example.com/this-is-an-endpoint
https://example.com/another/endpoint
https://example.com/some/other/endpoint
https://example.com/login
https://example.com/accounts
https://example.com/cart/items

Can be either http or https, we use https in the example.

Also endpoint can be different for different HTTP methods, for example:

GET /item/{id}
PUT /item/{id}

would be two different endpoints - one for retrieving (as in "cRud" abbreviation), and the other for updating (as in "crUd")

And that's all, really that simple!

All of the answers posted so far are correct, an endpoint is simply one end of a communication channel. In the case of OAuth, there are three endpoints you need to be concerned with:

1. Temporary Credential Request URI (called the Request Token URL in the OAuth 1.0a community spec). This is a URI that you send a request to in order to obtain an unauthorized Request Token from the server / service provider.
2. Resource Owner Authorization URI (called the User Authorization URL in the OAuth 1.0a community spec). This is a URI that you direct the user to to authorize a Request Token obtained from the Temporary Credential Request URI.
3. Token Request URI (called the Access Token URL in the OAuth 1.0a community spec). This is a URI that you send a request to in order to exchange an authorized Request Token for an Access Token which can then be used to obtain access to a Protected Resource.

Hope that helps clear things up. Have fun learning about OAuth! Post more questions if you run into any difficulties implementing an OAuth client.

It's one end of a communication channel, so often this would be represented as the URL of a server or service.

An endpoint is a URL pattern used to communicate with an API.