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10 Fun APIs to Use For Your Next Project

Henry Boisdequin on December 30, 2020

To put it simply: a web API (application programming interface) is a tool which tells a particular system what you want and gives the response back...

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Liyas Thomas • Dec 31 '20

Great collection. Feel free to use hoppscotch.io to spin up these APIs directly from your browser.

hoppscotch / hoppscotch

👽 Open source API development ecosystem https://hoppscotch.io

Dr-Grey • Jan 2 '21

Thank you for sharing, it'll help. I’ve been mostly using postman.

nnguyenminh • Jan 3 '21 • Edited

Thanks for recommend, it's useful for us.
I have a question, I call an devto API from website hoppscotch and get blocked by CORS policy, how to solve this issue? Thank you.

Liyas Thomas • Jan 3 '21 • Edited

You can try turning on Proxy mode from Settings page or you need to install Hoppscotch browser extension (links in readme) to fix CORS issues.

hoppscotch / hoppscotch-extension

Browser extensions to provide more capabilities to https://hoppscotch.io

nnguyenminh • Jan 3 '21

Thanks I turned it on but it seems like Proxy has an error. Would you might take a look ?

Liyas Thomas • Jan 3 '21

Yeah sure. I'll DM. Follow me to text you.

gshah2020 • Jan 3 '21

i see, to have had the same issue trying to call my localhost apis! The app works so well for my remote servers...would love to resolve the issue

Sidharth Shambu • Jan 25 '21

If you are using a node project just try this out - local-cors-proxy

Tom George • Jan 12 '21

@Liyas Thomas
How is it different from Postman or what is your USP?

Liyas Thomas • Jan 12 '21 • Edited

Hoppscotch is a progressive web app rather than an OS based standalone app. So you can test your APIs directly from your browser window without switching to another application. And can be used on your PC, tablet or even from your smartphone. And the resource consumption is 10x less when compared to a standalone app.

The best part is that whole project and ecosystem is open sourced.

GitHub:

hoppscotch / hoppscotch

👽 Open source API development ecosystem. https://hoppscotch.io

Being a 100% client side application, Hoppscotch can be hosted on any static hosting services or integrated to any internal application by any companies.

Read the story behind Hoppscotch:

Launching Hoppscotch v1.0 👽 - free, fast & beautiful API request builder 🎉

Liyas Thomas ・ Nov 5 '19 ・ 4 min read

#githunt #showdev #javascript #productivity

Sidharth Shambu • Jan 25 '21

Can we trust this with our key protected APIs ?

Liyas Thomas • Jan 26 '21

Hoppscotch is 100% open source.
GitHub: github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch

The app itself is a client-side application. Nothing ever leave from your browser whatsoever.

Henry Boisdequin • Dec 31 '20

Hoppscotch is an awesome tool, I use it all the time! Thanks for reading!

Liyas Thomas • Dec 31 '20

Thanks 🎉

Madza • Jan 2 '21

Amazing tool, as we all know 👍😉
Tho, what's the inspiration behind that name? 🙄 Sry, just curious 😀😀

Liyas Thomas • Jan 2 '21

A series of events occurred to came into a conclusion of renaming the project. You can check out my profile for specific articles but do check out this article for reason behind name.

Postwoman is changing name 🛸

Liyas Thomas ・ Aug 8 '20 ・ 1 min read

#webdev #javascript #watercooler

Madza • Jan 2 '21 • Edited

It's an alternate spelling of the game "hopscotch", and in my mind is a subtle nod to CS legend Grace Hopper, and implies "hopping" from one endpoint or web location to another.

What a thoughtful idea behind it @ben 🦗👍

nightwolfdev • Dec 30 '20

I also like PokeApi and SWAPI.

Henry Boisdequin • Dec 30 '20

They sound cool. I will definitely check them out. Thanks for reading!

Alvaro Montoro • Dec 31 '20

Spotify used to have apps within its app that you could develop in HTML+JS with the Spotify API. I submitted an idea for a trivia game that got initial approval, and a Spotify person even helped me get it ready. Still, they rejected the game because the data from the Spotify API was incorrect and could create confusion in the players. They suggested using Spotify's API for album covers and a little more and another music API for the data (dates, names, etc.), making it really tough for a single dev like me to complete the game. In the end, I abandoned the project (luckily for me because Spotify killed the apps shortly after). This was one of the reasons why I slowed down using 3rd party APIs. Unless they improved their data considerably, I would be wary of using the Spotify API.

Alvaro Montoro • Dec 31 '20

Sorry, my comment came out a bit negative.

The post actually looks interesting, and I am curious about trying a couple of the APIs that you mention. Thanks for sharing!

Henry Boisdequin • Dec 31 '20

Thanks for your insight. Have fun playing with some of the APIs on this list!

José Pinheiro • Dec 30 '20

Hi Henry,

First of all, awesome article!
I recently did a project using NASA API, it's just to add to the list :)

It has some cool things you can do and it's free to use!
api.nasa.gov/

Henry Boisdequin • Dec 30 '20

That’s a great one! Thanks for reading.

tq-bit • Dec 30 '20

I really like the finnhub one, could be a worthy successor to good old yahoo finance.
I'll give that a shot, thanks for the cool idea : ).

Here's one in case you're a Pokemon fan. They have sprites as well, if you want to get visual.
pokeapi.co/

Henry Boisdequin • Dec 30 '20

I think the Finnhub API is the successor to the Yahoo Finance API. The pokeapi is a classic, a great API. Thanks for reading!

Davyd McColl • Jan 2 '21

Thanks! I made currex which is a CLI currency converter between all supported currencies on exchangerate-api.com using the free interface (your own api key is required, but you don't need to pay). I've wanted a CLI currency converter for a while now, so this finally made me do it (:

examples for use: npx currex aud to cad or npx currex 23.99 aud to zar