Top 10 APIs for New Developers
The term API is an acronym, and it stands for “Application Programming Interface.”
An Application Programming Interface (API) is a computing interface which defines interactions between two applications. It defines the kinds of calls or requests that can be made, how to make them, the data formats that should be used, the conventions to follow, etc. It can also provide extension mechanisms so that users can extend existing functionality in various ways and to varying degrees.
We can ask them for data, and they return what we want, usually in the form of JSON or XML, so that we can go on to use the data we requested in our application or website.
While trying to level-up my front-end development and JavaScript skills, I ran out of ideas for things to create. In one of my online web development courses I got to know about APIs .I learnt making API calls to get data back in JSON format. I thought, what better way than to create some little projects with APIs? Initially I found it a little tricky to get my head around all the interactions at first, but after using 2 or 3 times, I understood how it all works.Then I started exploring all the available & developer friendly APIs and integrating them in my projects.
In this article I want to share some of my favourite APIs to play around with, in case any of you are looking to have a practice or want to learn more about the wonderful world of APIs.
- OMDb — The Open Movie Database
The OMDb API is a RESTful web service to obtain movie information from IMDb. It has a very developer friendly documentation. You can use the OMDb API to search for movies by title, IMDb identifier, date released, season or episode. The API also retrieves plot information and Rotten Tomatoes ratings.
The data this API provides is really humongous. For example if I send a request for Avengers Endgame, the response I get is -
You can learn more at http://www.omdbapi.com/
2. News API — A JSON API for live news and blog articles
News API is a simple and easy-to-use API that returns JSON metadata for headlines and articles live all over the web right now. It is very fast, free for development and easy to integrate.
You can get top and breaking headlines for a country, specific category in a country, single source, or multiple sources. You can also search with keywords. Articles are sorted by the earliest date published first.
For example if I search for bitcoin, the response I get is -
You can learn more at https://newsapi.org/
3. Weather API — OpenWeatherMap
OpenWeatherMap API provides current weather, forecasts, maps with precipitations, wind, clouds, data from weather stations.It provides weather data for any geographic location.
This is best, easiest and most usable API I have ever come across to get weather updates and conditions from all across the world.
For example if I request for city London, I get a response like-
4. Books API
The Books API provides information about book reviews and The New York Times Best Sellers lists. It lets you get NYT book review by author, ISBN, or title.
Although I have never used this API, but it is a popular one in the dev community. For example you can request various e-book data and response you will get is -
You can learn more at https://developer.nytimes.com
5. Unsplash API
When it comes to free stock images, Unsplash is no doubt the best platform.It provides beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project evn better than any royalty free or stock photos.
This Unsplash API provides free-usable images you can use to make a project like Google images or an image gallery.The API is available at https://api.unsplash.com
For example if I hit the /photos endpoint, I’ll retrieve a list of photos -
You can learn more at https://unsplash.com/documentation
6. Musixmatch lyrics API
Musixmatch lyrics API is a robust service that permits you to search and retrieve lyrics of a song in the simplest possible way. The musiXmatch api is built around lyrics, but there are many other data that it provides like track rating, music genre, artist, album rating, release date etc.
For example if I want the top 3 tracks of Justin Bieber, sorted by track rating, response I get is -
You can learn more at https://developer.musixmatch.com
7. Poke API — The RESTful Pokémon API
All the Pokémon data you’ll ever need in one place,easily accessible through a modern RESTful API.
The PokéAPI has excellent documentation, no rate limit, and has absolutely everything you need to create your very own PokéDex.
For example if I send a request to pokemon/pikachu, the response I get is -
You can learn more at https://pokeapi.co
8. JSONPlaceholder - Fake online REST API
JSONPlaceholder is a free online REST API that you can use whenever you need some fake data.
It’s great for tutorials, testing new libraries, sharing code examples. I personally use it very much when I need an API for testing.
For example If I send a request to https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users I get the following response :
You can learn more at https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com
10. REST Countries API
REST Countries API is great resource if you want Countries info as it provides so much of data that you can use to create your new project.
It provides data for country, capital, latitude longitude, currency, population, languages, flag, border countries etc.
For example If I send a request to https://restcountries.eu/rest/v2/name/India I get the following response :
You can learn more at https://restcountries.eu
I hope I provided you at least a good overview of what you need to know to get started with APIs. If you found value in this article click the CLAP button below and share it with more and more people so that they can get the same value as well.
Keep learning! Keep supporting!
