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API Security

VS — Sun, 24 May 2020 18:47:15 +0000

APIs, or application program interfaces, are vital tools for businesses in all industries. The importance of APIs from a technical standpoint, they allow the capabilities of one computer program to be used by another. They are a means by which two different programs are able to communicate.

Lately though, the term API is most often used to describe a particular kind of web interface. These Web APIs are a set of rules for interacting with a webserver (such as a Salesforce server), with the most common use case being data retrieval.

What is API Security?

API security can be explained as an overarching term that involves the implementation of processes and strategies intended to mitigate the vulnerabilities and security risks of APIs.

Generally, most API developers recognize the importance of adhering to API security principles because they do not want to ship a bad API. However, some of them lack sufficient skills in proper API development, are tempted to look for shortcuts to meet aggressive deadlines, or just fail to apply the API security rules. Consequently, such pitfalls may lead to serious risks: vulnerable APIs.

The Need for API Security

As cyberattackers continue to take advantage of vulnerable people, processes, and technology, they are also expanding their operations beyond the usual targets. Nothing appears to be outside of their jurisdiction, and no one is 100% safe from their malicious campaigns. Although organizations are making progress in protecting themselves, as soon as one attack vector is thwarted, another quickly becomes exposed.

API Security Checklist

Authentication - Authentication ensures that your users are who they say they are. Hackers that exploit authentication vulnerabilities can impersonate other users and access sensitive data.
Limit Requests
Force Encryption
Enforce HTTP Methods
Perform Content Negotiation
Validate User-Submitted Content
Check for trusted sources
Protect Sensitive Endpoints
Avoid Using Auto-Incrementing IDs
Process Data in the Background
Turn Debug Mode Off

Yahoo Finance API Tutorial

VS — Sun, 24 May 2020 18:05:08 +0000

Yahoo Finance API is a robust API that offers stock quotes, press releases, financial reports, and original content. It also offers online financial management tools. Developers can use Yahoo finance to query financial summaries, stock quotes, movers, and price charts. Even though there is no official Yahoo Finance, an unofficial version of yahoo finance api is available. This API offers the following four endpoints.

market/get-summary
market/get-movers
market/get-quotes
market/get-charts

Let's see what these endpoints have to offer.

get-summary endpoint allows you to get the real-time live market summary information in a specific region at that given time.

get-movers endpoint retrieves the day’s gainers, losers, and actives within a given region. For each category, the endpoint returns totals, specific quotes, and other information for that region.

get-quotes endpoint returns all relevant information for a specific stock quote or groups of stock quotes specified by symbol. For each quote this endpoint returns.

language
region
quote type
exchange
market
post market information
regular market information

get-charts endpoint returns data for visualizing a chart for a specific symbol and its comparisons. The data includes trading periods, timestamps, comparisons, and more to help draw out charts.

Yahoo Finance API can be used in the following languages.

NodeJS
PHP
Python
Ruby
Java
Objective-C
.NET
cURL

Top Forex API to Use in 2020

VS — Sat, 23 May 2020 17:47:05 +0000

Currency trading is a global market where currencies are bought and sold. To facilitate trading, many brokerage companies provide an online infrastructure that makes it easy for traders to access the global currency market. In recent years these companies have also provided APIs (Application Programmable interface) to help third-party application integrate with there platform. In this article, we will look at five forex apis you can use with confidence in 2020.

Yahoo Finance API - Yahoo Finance API allows developers to access and integrate financial data from the stock market and other financial establishments into third-party applications.
Tradingview API - Tradingview allows brokers and developers to connect their backend systems to TradingView, this will allow third-party applications to use the charts and other trading tools within their application
Oanda API - Oanda API allows developers to Connect directly with OANDA to develop trading strategies and automate their trading experience.
Stocktwits API - With this API developer can access the StockTwits social graph, display curated data streams, integrate watch lists, and easily share messages, links and charts directly from your application.
Fixer API - Fixer API allows developers to connect directly to Fixers powerful back-end infrastructure. Using this API these developers can connect easily integrate their application getting access to essential financial data like exchange rates for 170 world currencies, returning Time-Series data and fluctuation data.

5 Weather APIs for 2020

VS — Fri, 22 May 2020 13:25:54 +0000

A weather API is an essential business tool. Accurate and actionable weather forecast is business critical in industries like hospitality, transportation, shipping, insurance, public-safety, agriculture, to name a few.

Let me drive home that point with an example. As per a McKinsey report a storm causes, on an average $1.4B damage to a utility company over a period of 20 years. Actionable weather forecasts can help businesses better prepare for adverse weather events.

With Dark Sky API shutting down developers are looking for alternatives. So without further ado let me present the top 5 weather apis for 2020.

Open Weather Map API - The OpenWeatherMap API was established in 2014 by a group of engineers and experts in big data, data processing, and satellite imagery processing. The API returns current weather, historical weather data, and forecast details. It collects data from more than 40,000 locations around the world, allowing you to get accurate weather information about any place you want.
Weather 2020 API - This API was developed by Gary Lezak, a famed meteorologist. To enhance its accuracy, the API uses the powerful long range weather model technology known as the LRC.
WeatherBit API - This API gives you access to lightning-fast data to meet all your needs for up-to-date weather information. With the API, you can get accurate historical, current, and forecast weather data about any location around the world.
AccuWeather API - The AccuWeather API provides accurate weather data about any location on Earth. With the API, you can get minute-by-minute forecasts with engaging video presentations that can be deployed to a wide range of platforms.
Weather API - The Weather API gives you access to lightning-fast data to meet all your needs for up-to-date weather information. With the API, you can get accurate historical, current, and forecast weather data about any location around the world.

IMDb API

VS — Sun, 22 Mar 2020 19:29:22 +0000

The IMDB, or the Internet Movie Database is an online repository of movies, films, television & web series and more. You can visit the website and browse through its exhaustive source of information about the cast, the crew, plot summaries and trivia. Thankfully, all of this is also available as an API.

The IMDb API makes it easy to search and find information about movies and TV shows. It has an extensive set of API endpoints to query each aspect of a movie. In this tutorial, you will learn about the information that you can retrieve from the IMDb API. IMDb API is integrated with Rakuten RapidAPI so you can login to your account and access it using your universal subscription key.

Overview of IMDb API

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear about an upcoming movie? The cast comprising of the actors and the actresses. The crew, consisting of the director, the writer, and maybe the cinematographer. You would also want to know the release date and get a summary about the plot. You can query all this and more with the IMDb API.

The IMDb API is organized into several specific endpoints that provide all the above information and more. To get a closer look, jump to the IMDb API console.

Check out the list of endpoints on the left side of the API console, and you can see how neatly it is organized in a way to query different aspects of a movie.

This is a good example of a well defined information architecture about a subject, which in this case, is a movie, a television show or a streaming entertainment video.

Since the endpoint list is extensive, a complete description of all the endpoints is a beyond the scope of this tutorial. However, we will cover the main endpoints which are in line with your curiosity questions when you hear about a new movie release.

Before you begin, take a look at the Pricing tab in the API console. The IMDB API has a freemium pricing model with a BASIC subscription tier that gives you 500 API calls free, per month. Make sure you opt for the BASIC subscription before you proceed with this tutorial further.

Working With IMDb API

Let’s take a look at some of the prominent endpoints of IMDb API which provide key information about a movie.

Be sure to subscribe to the API and keep the API console page open to test the endpoints that we are going to explain now.

Searching for a Movie Name

The “GET title/find” endpoint is used to search for a movie by its name. This endpoint accepts a string as the name of a movie or TV show to search for. It returns a list of all movies and shows which match the string, even if it is a partial match.

Select the “GET title/find” endpoint and try searching for “titanic”.

Under the “results” key you can see a list of all the matching movies. The first one is the popular movie featuring Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet. You can see their name inside the “principals” key.

Another important thing to remember about the search results is the id of each movie.

In the case of Titanic, the id is “/title/tt0120338/”. The string prefixed with “tt” followed by a number sequence is the unique identifier for this movie. The IMDb API uses this id to search for other information related to this movie.

So if you want to perform further queries on any movie, then you must take a note of the id. Now that we know the id of Titanic, let’s find out some more information about this movie.

Searching for a Movie Cast

After you know the movie name, the next logical thing is to know the cast. Although the “GET title/find” endpoint gives you the names of the leading actors, it does not provide the full list of cast.

To get the list of complete cast, you can use the “GET title/get-top-cast”. This endpoint takes the movie id as a parameter returns the cast list. So if you choose “GET title/get-top-cast” endpoint on the API console and feed in the id of the movie “Titanic”, this is what the request looks like.

What you see in the API response is a list of ids of cast. Similar to the movie id, each person also has an id starting with nm followed by a number.

In order to get the name and other details of the cast, you need to call another endpoint, “GET title/get-charname-list”. This endpoint takes in the movie id and cast id as parameter. Select this endpoint and enter the movie id of “Titanic” and the name id of the first item you got from the API response of “GET title/get-top-cast”.

Wrapping Up

We have just covered the tip of the iceberg in this tutorial. Go ahead and try the IMDb API and search for your favorite movies. You can even retrieve information about awards, reviews, shooting locations and images and more. This is a complete treasure trove of data. You can build movie quizzes and perform data analytics to unearth useful information.

Also if you are looking to build apps around movies and entertainment then check out our other APIs related to movies.