One of the biggest and most popular ways to send and receive data on the web is through APIs. API stands for Application Programming Interface and they are used to be a way for people to get and store data from different websites and sources. Unlike a typical website, most APIs are a simple and organized storage of data that can be easily searched through to find specific needs. Below is a list of different web APIs that can be used to do various requests and services.
- https://openweathermap.org/api
- Contains weather data including anything from the current weather, to a 16 day forecast
- Also contains...
- Historical weather data
- UV Index data
- Air pollution data
- Weather alerts
- https://developers.google.com/youtube/
- Allows and user to use an embedded player to play videos directly in your app and customize the playback experience
- Can search, organize, and play videos directly from API
- https://api.nasa.gov/
- Can display information such as NASA's picture of the day directly on your website or app
- Contains information in the form of numerical data, pictures, and factual data
- Updates every day and contains daily information from as far as 15 years ago
- https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs
- Filter through tweets based on keywords, hashtags, etc.
- Build personalized customer experiences with the Direct Message API
- Tweet directly through the API
- https://www.programmableweb.com/api/houndify
- Provides smart, voice-enabled, conversational interfaces to anything with an internet connection
- Can be used to build speech-to-text applications
- https://watson-api-explorer.ng.bluemix.net/
- Provides access to IBM's Watson, an AI for smarter business
- Capable of things like visual recognition, text to speech (and vice versa), language translation, tone analysis, etc.
- https://www.fitbit.com/dev/dev
- Provides access to personal user fitness data
- Display technical information of Fitbit devices
- Adjust settings
- Access technical information about the Fitbit Companion APIs
- Provide your robot or application with smart reactions to natural language questions, similar to Siri
- Provides an interface to standard functions like chatting, controlling a device, looking up information, creating messages, etc.
- Allows developers to get more accurate location data without using a GPS
- Triangulates your location using cell towers and wifi access points
- Saves your battery and allows for indoor location
- https://swapi.co/
- All the Star Wars data you've ever wanted
- Planets, Spaceships, Vehicles, People, Films and Species, all in one place
- https://developer.marvel.com/
- The Marvel Comics API allows developers everywhere to access information about Marvel's vast library of comics—from what's coming up, to 70 years ago
- https://api.slack.com/web
- An interface for querying information from and enacting change in a Slack workspace
- The Events API is a streamlined, easy way to build apps and bots that respond to activities in Slack
- The Real Time Messaging API is a WebSocket-based API that allows you to receive events from Slack in real time and send messages as users
- https://dog.ceo/dog-api/
- “The internet’s biggest collection of open source dog pictures”
- Generates random photo of dog when run
As you can see, there are plenty of web APIs out there for many different sites and on many different topics. Chances are, if you need information or data about something, there is an API available to you that you can filter through and grab that information.