Introduction
The term API is an acronym, and it stands for “Application Programming Interface”.
Think of an API like a menu in a restaurant. The menu provides a list of dishes you can order, along with a description of each dish. When you specify what menu items you want, the restaurant’s kitchen does the work and provides you with some finished dishes. You don’t know exactly how the restaurant prepares that food, and you don’t really need to.
Let's explore some cool, unique and fun APIs today.
Removal API
So, the first API we are going to explore is from removal.ai. Removal.ai makes it easy for us to remove backgrounds from our images and the final image we get is more clean and good. It's simple to use using its website where we just have to drag and drop our image and it provides us our resultant image.
Now, this website gives us API access also. We just need an API Key and we can use the below cURL command to remove background without going on its website.
$ curl -L -X POST "https://api.removal.ai/3.0/remove"
-H "Rm-Token: YOUR_API_KEY"
-F "image_file=@path/to/image.jpg"
-F "get_file=1" -o transparent_image.png
You can get API Key from here and read the entire API documentation here.
Random Jokes API
icanhazdadjoke.com is the largest selection of dad jokes on the internet. Now supporting many different integrations to ensure you can access the dad jokes that you need wherever you are. You can add it to Slack or even Alexa. It provides us API to fetch a random joke, a specific joke, or searching for jokes in a variety of formats. The best thing is we don't need to authenticate ourselves for using the API.
We can fetch data in different ways. The basic cURL command to fetch joke in JSON format is :
$ curl -H "Accept: application/json" https://icanhazdadjoke.com/j/R7UfaahVfFd
You can learn more about it here.
Marvel API
The next API we are going to discuss is from Marvel. Marvel fans must like this post now. It allows developers everywhere to access information about Marvel's vast library of comics—from what's coming up, to 70 years ago. This tool will help developers everywhere create amazing, uncanny and incredible web sites and applications using data from the 70-plus years of the Marvel age of comics.
Just signup for an account and get an API here. We get a huge API access ranging from characters to series and comics and everything. Just read the API documentation here and start exploring this API as much you can (of course, Marvel fans must do).
Free Meal API
This API comes from TheMealDB.com where we can search meals using name, area, categories and ingredients. The API and site will always remain free at point of access. You can use the Test API Key "1" during development of your app or for educational use. However you must apply for a key a production API key via email if releasing publicly. You must explore this API here if you are a foodie..
Fun Translations API
Funtranslations API gives access to the full set of translations available at funtranslations.com so that you can integrate them in your workflow or an app. wh
The base endpoint is :
https://api.funtranslations.com/translate/
For public calls you don't need to pass any API Key. Just invoke the endpoint (see examples here). However, for paid subscriptions you need to pass the API key in the header as X-FunTranslations-Api-Secret.
NASA API
Outer space has always been fascinating to humans. The objective of this API is to make NASA data, including imagery, eminently accessible to application developers. The api.nasa.gov catalog is growing.
You do not need to authenticate in order to explore the NASA data. However, if you will be intensively using the APIs to, say, support a mobile application, then you should sign up for a NASA developer key. You can learn more about the APIs here.
ADVICE SLIP
Advice Slip JSON API comes from the AdviceSlip.com where we can get random advice, get advice by id or search an advice. It is completely free and can be helpful if you want to generate advice. Learn more about this here.
Conclusion
I hope you liked the above fun APIs and will surely check them out someday. You can also check out this github repository for an extensive list of public APIs.
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