While the standard projects-to-build list includes apps like todo and social login sites that are great for fostering the core concepts of programming, they have come kind of become expected and predictable.
Unique projects stand out and building such projects needs more time and effort.
Not if you know unique APIs that have the data ready for you to use.
Below is a list of 6unique APIs you can use to build unique projects:
1. Fun translations
As the name suggests, this API can convert your text into funny translations.
From Yoda to pirates and Shakespeare, they have a diverse set of translations available.
Carefully segregated, you can find some amusing translations here. You can implement this API in your project easily.
Here’s a sample output of the API call:
{
"success": {
"total": 1
},
"contents": {
"translated": "Lost a planet, master obiwan has.",
"text": "Master Obiwan has lost a planet.",
"translation": "yoda"
}
}
A project idea is building a visually engaging app with animations for the specific translation you have chosen. For instance, if you go with the Game of Thrones translations, then build something like a fansite of it and feature it in these translations.
You can even build a chatbot that converts its responses to these funny translations.
2. Crypto API
Whale Alert is a popular API that alerts you when a big transaction takes place.
While the free plan only has 10 calls per minute limit, you can cache these responses so you don’t hit the rate limit.
Here’s a sample output of a transaction:
{
"result": "success",
"count": 1,
"transactions": [
{
"blockchain": "ethereum",
"symbol": "eth",
"transaction_type": "transfer",
"hash": "0015286d8642f0e0553b7fefa1c168787ae71173cbf82ec2f2a1b2e0ffee72b2",
"from": {
"address": "d24400ae8bfebb18ca49be86258a3c749cf46853",
"owner": "gemini",
"owner_type": "exchange"
},
"to": {
"address": "07ee55aa48bb72dcc6e9d78256648910de513eca",
"owner_type": "unknown"
},
"timestamp": 1549908368,
"amount": 42000,
"amount_usd": 5110718.5,
"transaction_count": 1
}
]
}
A project idea is to create a Twitter bot that uses this API to fetch data.
People can come to your site, subscribe to your service, and choose a coin they want to track, they can get DMs from your Twitter bot every time a whale transaction happens.
3. Pixela API
Pixela is a different type of API. It is targeted toward mapping your habits in a GitHub-inspired graph.
As you can probably tell, it is geared toward developers and open-source contributors who are familiar with the GitHub interface.
There are many useful examples you can find here.
One way of implementing it is to measure the number of open pull requests. Every time there is a new PR, you can update the Pixela graph so you can track such requests.
There are innovative use cases for such an API.
Another app you can build with this is a sleep tracker. Here’s an article you can translate that discusses it.
4. AniList API
AniList is an incredible platform for anime lovers.
More than 100,000 users use it to track, share and discover their favorite animes and manga.
It consists of over 500,000 anime and manga entries, just an API call away.
Their API is pretty straightforward and free for non-commercial use.
Just like the Fun Translation, you can build a site around your favorite anime and manga using the data provided by this API.
You can even mix this with other APIs like the OMDb API to build a site around a particular genre(such as horror, comedy, or suspense).
5. REST Countries API
REST Countries is one of the first APIs that I built a project around and I simply enjoyed exploring the possibilities of assorted apps you can build with this.
If it wasn’t clear from the name, this is a simple API that gives you information about countries via a RESTful API.
The API is incredibly intuitive to use, although I highly recommend caching the responses.
A simple call can get you started.
https://restcountries.com/v3.1/name/peru
You can use this API to build a variety of applications depending upon the time and effort you are willing to commit.
A simple application can be a site with a directory of these countries and their flags.
But you can go further and create a quiz app. You can show a flag of the country and ask the user to guess it for 10 points. You can allow hints(capital city, currency, etc) and reduce the points to 6 if they were able to guess the country with the use of hints.
No need to authenticate users, you can use the local storage and IndexedDb to get started and keep track of user scores.
6. MealDB API
The MealDB provides you with meal recipes.
You get a thumbnail image of the dish, instructions, a list of recipes as well as a YouTube video.
In other words, you get everything to build a beautiful directory of recipes.
A simple call to https://www.themealdb.com/api/json/v1/1/search.php?s=Arrabiata would return all the properties we discussed above.
A project idea around this API is segmentation via geographical locations.
The API supports filtering by region(such as Indian, Canadian, etc).
You can ask the user to choose a location and based on that you can display a list of recipes.
I can’t stress enough that caching is important when using such APIs. It reduces the load & bandwidth on the API host’s side and also makes your app faster.
Final thoughts
Having unique projects in your portfolio is always a welcome addition.
Moreover, building these projects is a good way to sharpen your skills, and sharing such projects in tech communities can definitely be amusing for the members.
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This blog starts my writing journey on the DEV platform and I intend on publishing more content here soon. Stay tuned for updates.
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