Useful API’s for potential projects
If you are new to Data Science or programming you might have heard the term API used around a lot. So what is an API? What can it do? How do I use it? In this blog post we will cover the basics of what an API is and list some easy to use API’s that you can practice with.
API’s
So what is an API? API stands for Application Program Interface. An API is what programs and services use to talk with other programs and services. By using an API I can create a piece of code or program that can directly interact with an established program/service. API’s therefore act as a middle man between programs and helps easily transfer data between them.
Not all API’s are created equal, they differ quite a bit so it is important to read the documentation before getting started. So now that you know what an API is, we can introduce three useful API’s that might even help on your next project.
Yelp
One extremely useful API for projects is Yelp’s Fusion API. If you’re thinking of doing a project on local businesses look no further. Yelp’s Fusion API lets you access reviews and rating for local businesses all across the nation. The documentation to find out more about Yelp’s Fusion API can be found here.
Spotify
Another API that can be used for future projects is Spotify’s web API. Spotify’s web API will return metadata about music artists, albums, and tracks from Spotify’s Catalogue. Not only does it return metadata, it can also return user specific data such as specific user playlists. Data from Spotify can be very fun to look at so this api is ideal for anyone that wants to tinker with artist data. The documentation can be found here.
Disney API
Another fun API that could potentially be used for a project is the Disney API. Disney’s API can provide information on any Disney Character. Some of the information that are provided are: films/tv shows, villain or ally, when they were created…etc. This API can be implemented and used very quickly since it is only used to access data and does not need any authentication. To documentation for Disney’s API can be found here.
Conclusion
Api’s are very useful and are extremely important. They are the way programs interact and talk to one another. If this blog post got your gears turning and you want to look at more public API’s a list of public API’s can be found here.
