Building a no-signup REST API for 25 daily-updated public data sites

张刀刀 — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 17:24:25 +0000

I maintain a group of small sites that archive daily public records and related cultural reference material. The hard part was not fetching JSON; it was deciding when data from multiple sources was complete enough to publish.

I built a read-only REST API that normalizes the archive and aggregates 25 daily-updated series. Disclosure: I maintain the API and the linked 181649 / 49VIP sites.

curl 'https://api.181649.com/api/v1/latest'

The API is free and requires no signup or API key. It includes:

a stable response envelope;
OpenAPI 3.1 and CORS;
paginated historical records;
30 requests per IP per minute;
issue, date, number-count, and cross-site consistency checks;
explicit provenance stating that the two public domains are mirrors of the same aggregation source.

For example, I reject the latest aggregate rather than returning a partial success when any of the 25 series is stale, has a mismatched issue/date, or duplicates another signature. Clients receive a 502 and can keep a previously validated cache.

Docs: https://api.181649.com/docs?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=public_api_launch

OpenAPI: https://api.181649.com/openapi.json

GitHub examples: https://github.com/tengleisun1-stack/49-gallery-api

The intended uses are archival work, integration testing, data-cleaning exercises, automation, and descriptive statistics. It does not offer wagering, payments, prize claims, or outcome guarantees.

I would especially value feedback on the response schema, provenance fields, and whether downloadable yearly snapshots would be more useful than pagination alone.

DEV Community: 张刀刀

Building a no-signup REST API for 25 daily-updated public data sites