APIs.io – The API search engine

http://apis.io

by picsoung • 12 years ago

272 84 12 years ago

apis.io

SlashmanX• 12 years ago

Seems to be perpetually stuck on "loading...". Hug of death?

kremlin• 12 years ago

me too

scott_w• 12 years ago

There's a couple of syntax errors, but it does eventually load. I think the whole screen is dependent on a web request completing.

Tip: try to get as much of it rendered as possible while you're waiting. Most JavaScript frameworks have the ability to manage sub-views of some sort, so you can get most of that screen in place. If you're waiting on the items to load, try greying out the search box or something?

picsoung11• 12 years ago

Still not loading for you?

corobo• 12 years ago

I have no idea if there's a backend hug of death but the search function seems to do nothing at all when I try to search. Click search.. no loading icon, no loading text, nada

numbers2• 12 years ago

Site is stuck at `loading...`

caniscrator3• 12 years ago

worked in chrome.

numbers2• 12 years ago

Did it take awhile to load?

I'm on chrome on mac and it doesn't seem to load even after about 5 minutes of just letting it do its thing.

picsoung11• 12 years ago

OP here, i'm spawning more machines, hang in there

ssharp• 12 years ago

Can I get the list of APIs via an API?

picsoung11• 12 years ago

You can access it using our API http://apis.io/apiDoc

desdiv• 12 years ago

Searching "apis.io" on your site returns the right result, but clicking on that result results in a 404 :)

timdorr• 12 years ago

   http://apis.io/api/apis

Yes, that is the actual URL...

Can we get a .api TLD so it can be http://apis.api/api/apis?

And maybe an HTTP protocol extension so it can be api://apis.api/api/apis?

avalaunch• 12 years ago

This is really cool. The one feature request I have is that descriptions be added. The tags alone aren't enough to determine what an api is offering.

killerbat00• 12 years ago

It might be nice from a usability perspective to only show the error message once. As it stands now, it's possible to continually search for a non-existing API and fill the screen with red errors [1]. (Not that this is a particularly compelling or realistic workflow or even worth fixing. They disappear within a few seconds anyway, which is nice.)

[1] http://imgur.com/dqZY8zW

picsoung11• 12 years ago

OP here - If you have trouble loading the homepage to search for APIs (due to lot of traffic)

You can check static pages: http://apis.io/faq http://apis.io/lint http://apis.io/builder http://apis.io/apiDoc http://apis.io/about

coldcode• 12 years ago

Right now it is returning loops of the same apis over and over, randomly.

_lce0• 12 years ago

Sweet!

Would be really awesome if the site could show api's documentation in a unified standard format

Kudos for this!

apievangelist9• 12 years ago

Coming up next. :-)

sinzone• 12 years ago

Good revamp of the old APIsIO. I suggest to check also PublicAPIs (http://publicapis.com) with 5,000 APIs listed and maintained by the community.

biomimic• 12 years ago

We know what prevents this from happening to public APIs: Music Labels Reach A New Low, Sue Developer For Using Seeqpod API http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/25/music-labels-reach-a-new-lo...

njyx6• 12 years ago

Public APIs is also a directory - you could now use the apis.json data to keep that directory info from getting stale. That's the point of the http://www.apisjson.org + search combination.

frankdenbow• 12 years ago

Very cool. Would be great if you teamed up with Readme.io to make sure all of their customers are loaded into the search engine (our docs are with Readme)

apievangelist9• 12 years ago

I will coordinate with them Frank. I've been working with them for stories. Good suggestion.

hdivider2• 12 years ago

One thing to add, perhaps: include API wrappers, client libraries etc.

Stuff that makes it easier to use the actual underlying API.

Eg the YouTube Data API is nice, but you can save a ton of time if you use one of the client libraries:

https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/libraries

_mikz• 12 years ago

Would be nice to have some general collection of libraries in various languages. Hope we will there one day, but for now we have API Pages, that include middleware (like mini apps) to extend/modify one/various api.

https://www.apitools.com/apis/burning-man

kingmorgan3• 12 years ago

there is one other site that i have been using since FOREVER that does this with client side code snippets and sdks

EDIT: found it its http://www.mashape.com

hdivider2• 12 years ago

Awesome. Thanks for digging that up!

caniscrator3• 12 years ago

Great. Why is it taking so much time to load ?

caniscrator3• 12 years ago

Worked in chrome.

maaaats2• 12 years ago

The icons doesn't work in Firefox on W8, works in Chrome, though. Just shows squares with numbers inside.

picsoung11• 12 years ago

Thanks for your feedback

is this related to icon font used in the app ? Font-awesome? You can check in your console and see if there a 404 on the corresponding file.

maaaats2• 12 years ago

I get "invalid version tag" and "rejected by sanitizer" for glyphicons-halflings.woff and .ttf.

pknerd• 12 years ago

How is it different than Programmable Web?

(http://www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory)

njyx6• 12 years ago

It's search v's directory. The idea is you can post meta-data on an API on your own domain using a format http://www.apisjson.org/ that can then be crawled. Right now you still submit links, but it'll start crawling. So then anyone can write a search engine (the code for apis.io is open source).

With a directory like programmableweb it's useful but you need to put your data into the repository - and then remember to update it.

apievangelist9• 12 years ago

With APIs.io you can launch your own ProgrammableWeb. ;-)

bradhe• 12 years ago

What's the use case for searching for "an API" exactly? Usually, there's something very specific you want to do with an API...

wallawe• 12 years ago

I think this is a legitimate question. Personally, it would be cool to scan lists of API's for idea inspiration but this doesn't really provide that functionality. Now what would be cool here, is if the APIs returned here had docs presented on the website with a consistent UX/UI. But then you would need an API for an API :)

njyx6• 12 years ago

The apis.json format this looks for contains fields for formats like http://www.swagger.io/ which it could then pull in (or someone else could) to render the docs in line.

ponyous• 12 years ago

Usually but not always. For example, I was just searching for a weather API and apis.io was really helpful.

njyx6• 12 years ago

Main thing that's useful is that if it can pull in all the elements (def portal, specs, etc.) you get deeplinks to everything. Google also doesn't help finding some APIs easily since it just treats it as content or they aren't linked.

In the long run hopefully a lot of the fields in the apis.json files this pulls on will be machine readable (e.g. meta-data for things like major T&C provisions), pointers to libraries etc. so you could filter on that.

jgreen10• 12 years ago

Getting ideas for what's out there.

dpweb• 12 years ago

What I'd like to see, replace the "Documentation" link in each search engine result - with the apis json rendered to a standard template thusly http://jsbin.com/favajizuti/1/edit

apievangelist9• 12 years ago

As we add Swagger specs for each one, that is exactly what will be possible. Baby steps.

notastartup3• 12 years ago

it gets 3scale marketing traffic. it doesn't offer anything useful or functional just a viola effect.

apievangelist9• 12 years ago

It doesn't offer anything useful? Really? I spent almost 80 hours hand crafting the APIs.json for this release. I'm building federal gov versions of APIs.io with this to drive traffic to vital gov resources, and working to priortize the APIs.json + Swagger for vital non-profit resources ilke DPLA. WTF have you done notastartup to further the API community? eh? Links please!!

njyx6• 12 years ago

I guess we'll see if people find it useful - the point of this is: there is current NO structured meta-data about APIs out on the web and that will be needed if we're one day goingto find APIs with all their associated elements as easily as we can web pages today.

Hence the format http://www.apisjson.org (it's basically sitemap for APIs) and the search engine http://www.apis.io. The search engine is also open source so you can run your own, format is completely open.

So if we (3scale) get some benefit I won't be unhappy - but if more people start posting API info then it'll benefit everyone.

daviddoran• 12 years ago

Searching for "voice calling" changes the input to "voice\ calling". And then there are no results :(

picsoung11• 12 years ago

you could try http://apis.io/?search=call or http://apis.io/?search=voice

there are also some listed http://apis.io/?search=tag:voice

picsoung11• 12 years ago

OP here - everything should be back to normal in terms of loading time. Sorry for the inconvenience

orliesaurus• 12 years ago

that elasticity!

pgroves• 12 years ago

If you just want the list of names of the apis:

    curl "http://apis.io/api/apis?limit=1000" -s |python -m json.tool |grep "\"name\"\:"

picsoung11• 12 years ago

or you can do

  curl "http://apis.io/api/apis?limit=1000&fields=name" -s |python -m json.tool

finnn• 12 years ago

curl "http://apis.io/api/apis?limit=1000" -s | jq .data\[\].name

jq FTW

amadeusw• 12 years ago

This reminds me of Bret Victor's "Future of programming" at http://vimeo.com/71278954 particularly at 13:50 about APIs - envisioning how computers could themselves discover available services at other computers. Maybe this API index is just the first step towards enabling computer programs to independently interact with each other.

jarmitage2• 12 years ago

Same. Alan Kay talked about this once, I have a paraphrase to hand:

"This current effort of doing term-based ontologies is a disaster. It requires too much agreement [...] I can't find anyone working on this notion of general negotiation between anything that can negotiate [...] Negotiating meaning is the problem of our time."

meursault334• 12 years ago

Do you know the source of this? I tried and failed to locate it. I would be really interested to watch this talk.

smizell2• 12 years ago

I think a key here is hypermedia. APIs can only be machine-discoverable if there are hypermedia links pointing to them (which is how this helps). If there are no links, then some human must hardcode it.

This also is a reason for including hypermedia in your API, because really, being machine-discoverable is not just something that the API itself benefits from... each resource and state can benefit from included hypermedia as well.

apievangelist9• 12 years ago

I agree that hypermedia is a more optimal solution for API discovery. APIs.io + APIs.json + machine readable formats like Swagger will provide us with a bridge between what we have, and what we should have (aka hypermedia). We'd all love to have a perfect reality, but unfortunately we get the one we have. ;-)

apievangelist9• 12 years ago

Bret Victor has influenced a lot of my thinking that has gone into APIs.json and API Commons, and the work I've done with EFF on the Oracle v Google case, and how we need to get APIs to the next step. Thanks for the observation.

canterburry• 12 years ago

Any chance you will accept Swagger API docs? I have my APIs already documented in Swagger.

apievangelist9• 12 years ago

Using the APIs.json format you can reference any machine readable format like Swagger. We are currently working on generating Swagger for each of the APIs currently listed. By February there will be Swagger for most of them listed.

nvk• 12 years ago

I'm getting 400 error when trying to add my API

https://coinkite.com/static/api/apis.json

picsoung11• 12 years ago

Hi,

You could use http://apis.io/lint to validate your apis.json file.

Testing your file I found that properties are not correct

"properties": [ { "type": "X-Documentation", "url": "https://docs.coinkite.com" } ],

should work

also "photo" is not a valid parameter. And "vCard" is expecting a URL and can't be empty.

hope it helps

emp• 12 years ago

Is there a API search engine where one can enter sample inputs and outputs, and get a list of methods that return the outputs for the given inputs? Smalltalk has a search function like this - very handy instead of trying to guess method names.

kingmorgan3• 12 years ago

Don't wanna highjack the thread but that's exactly what i was mentioning here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8637324

notastartup3• 12 years ago

gave up trying to add an api.

eo3x0• 12 years ago

We almost need the inverse: APIs that are showing signs of death ala Netflix. It's usually the case that you have an idea for something and an API is pretty easy to find. Getting your integration pulled out under your feet is really what sucks.

apievangelist9• 12 years ago

I'm working on APIs.json collections of deprecated APIs, as well as working on APIs.json references to building blocks like pricing, and TOS...then allow for inverse searching for APIs that do not have pricing, or have TOS that are not friendly. The next project after API Commons is to take TOS Didn't Read work and incorporate as part of APIs.json, so that APIs.io will have this type of data to search by.

thejosh• 12 years ago

That's what happens when you build upon the shores of others.

billmalarky• 12 years ago

Still, it's a risk often worth taking. If you look at many of the hypergrowth projects, a lot of them rely on a current market adopting their product as a supplement to a platform.

matthuggins• 12 years ago

Appears to be down or broken.

tellor• 12 years ago

Nice!

Very interesting facility.

Original with solution to add API in JSON-format and so on.

asyncwords2• 12 years ago

I'm getting the following error [1] every time I try to open the page with IE11 on Windows 8.1. It prevents bootstrap.js from loading, which then prevents everything else from working and just shows a blank white page.

Might explain why some people are having problems loading the site, though it works fine in Firefox for me.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/HWdHT33.png

picsoung11• 12 years ago

Interesting error... thanks for reporting it. Unfortunately I have no idea what's going on. but we I will investigate this issue.

asyncwords2• 12 years ago

If it helps, the debugger points to an invalid ʹ character in 01135560588655f631606d051ab4cd4df545eead.js. I circled the character in blue [1]. Beyond that I haven't the foggiest idea.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/WgiitFj.png

APIs.io – The API search engine

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