10 Fun (and Free) APIs to Use For Your Next Coding Project
From Covid-19 to Random Facts, learning about new APIs is often a great way to beat developer’s block.
Often as a developer, it can be hard to come up with ideas for what to make next. In these situations, it is often helpful to learn about new APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to gain inspiration.
What is an API?
An API or Application Programming interface is the element that promotes effective communication between the system and the user.
Let’s take the example of a vehicle that has the primary purpose of moving individuals from one location to another. Here, the vehicle’s pedals and wheels act as the API. You do not have to analyze what happens on the inside of the vehicle. As long as you’re able to use the wheels or pedals, you move.
Similarly, in software development, APIs help developers achieve functionality in their projects. For example, Google has an API that allows you to get information about maps and Twitter has an API that lets you send tweets programmatically.
Usually, an API usually has documentation that lets you know how to request information from it. Using APIs not only helps you develop faster but also more efficiently.
So, is a list of 10 fun APIs you may not have heard of. Hopefully, checking out these APIs will give you your next idea for a fun side project!
Note: Links to the documentation have been attached along with each API.
1. NASA Open APIs
NASA Open APIs make available NASA data, including imagery, eminently accessible to software developers.
One of the most popular NASA Open APIs is the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). It structures the APOD imagery and associated metadata so that it can be repurposed for other applications. The full documentation for this API can be found in the APOD API Github repository.
Another popular API is The Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET). It provides a curated list of natural events and along with a way to link those events to event-related NRT image layers. The full documentation for this API can be found here.
2. Covid-19 API
The COVID 19 API gives you access to all kinds of coronavirus-related data. Given the current circumstances, this is an incredibly useful API that can help you build something that can be really useful to humanity. It allows you to build dashboards, web or mobile apps, or integrate into other applications.
The data is sourced from Johns Hopkins CSSE. The responses are in JSON making for easy integration.
While the basic API is free to use it does have a premium version that includes a second data source with new deaths per million, population, population density, median age, aged 65 and older, aged 70 and older, GDP per capita, covid death rate, diabetes prevalence, hand washing facilities, etc.
3. Random Facts API
Random Facts API is a full-fledged facts API, which allows you to retrieve random facts based on a category, drawn from hundreds of thousands of fact entries in the database. To provide finer granularity ‘subcategory’ is supported. You can store private facts and retrieve them back. Historical facts of the type ‘On this day’ are also supported.
To see some of the facts in the database you can look at the random facts generator here.
4. Wit.ai
With the Wit.ai API, you can process text or speech and turn it into recognizable actions that your app or website can use. It can also be used to build an intelligent bot for your application. It can also be used to make multimodal interaction available to anyone, anywhere, through the applications you create.
5. REST Countries
The REST Countries API is a RESTful API that allows you to get information about the world’s countries. For example, you can send a query to get a country’s language, currency, and capital.
The API is free to use and is supported by donations.
6. Open Weather API
If you want to incorporate weather into your app, you use the Open Weather API. It allows you to gather weather data for over 200,000 cities. You can also use the API to get access to historical weather data.
The data collection includes Current Weather Data, Hourly Weather Data 4 Days, Daily forecast 16 days, Climatic Forecast 30 days, etc.
7. Spoonacular Food API
With over 5000+ recipes, 115k+ menu items, and 90k+ products, the Spoonacular Food API allows you to easily and efficiently create recipe management, meal planning, and recipe analysis applications.
You can find recipes to use ingredients you already have, find recipes based on nutritional requirements, extract recipes from any website, classify a recipe’s type or cuisine, generate an entire meal plan or shopping list, and even create a chatbot.
8. Spotify API
Spotify’s Web API allows you to query data about music artists, albums, and tracks, directly from the Spotify Data Catalogue. The API is based on simple REST principles and the endpoints return JSON metadata about queried information.
Along with this, the Web API also provides access to user-related data, such as playlists and music that the user saves in the Your Music library. Such access is enabled through selective authorization, by the user.
9. Deck of Cards API
One of the most fun ways to develop your programming skills is building different card games, especially if you’ve run into a roadblock on what to make next.
The Deck of Cards API allows you to implement a deck of cards into your program without having to code them yourselves and is an excellent way for new programmers to practice using APIs.
10. OMDb API
The Open Movie Database API is a RESTful web service to obtain movie information. All the content and images on the site are contributed and maintained by users.
It can be used to create a movie search app which returns the movie along with its ratings, reviews, and posters.
