Today we are going to go over some API’s, what you can make with these, and show you an example of deployed projects that use these API’s.
Weather
We are going to kick off our cool list with the Weather API. The thing that makes this API pretty cool is what it offers beyond just standard weather forecasts. This API packs some cool info like air pollution, weather history, 15 day forecast, and weather maps.
Project ideas include: Current weather app, Forecasting app, Air Quality checker app, or combine any of these.
Travel
Next up on our list is a API to help find flights: Sky Scanner. This API is interesting because it allows the user to find flights, and book a rental car for when they land. Parameters are customizable for each user, to fit their trip.
Project ideas include: Travel planner.
Nerd Stuff
And now we get into my favorite section: Nerd API’s. Starting off we are going to look at a Star Wars API. For those interested in Star Trek: Don’t worry, Trekkies, I have you covered in the next API. You can pull data for planets, vehicles, star ships, species, films, and people. And if you’re a hardcore fan of the hairy variety you can get your data in Wookie instead of JSON.
Project ideas: Build an online Star Wars encyclopedia.
And now, Trekkies, here is your API: http://stapi.co/. You can find food, episodes, characters, comics, space craft, species, and a long list of other Star Trek related stuff. It is still a beta, and was started a few years ago.
Project ideas: Build an online Star Trek encyclopedia.
Gif
Now we will take a look at some Gifs and our Giphy API. This API allows you access to a Gif library. You can get random Gif’s or search for specific Gifs.
If you want to see a project idea that is deployed, please check this out:
https://github.com/J91Branson/GifTasticHW
Code is here:
https://j91branson.github.io/GifTasticHW
Project ideas include: random Gif generator, Gif search, Themed Gif search.
Movies / Shows
Next we are going to cover an API that will show movie quotes: Movie Quotes API. This allows you to pull data with the following parameters: year, actor, character, movie, and category.
Project ideas: A quote generator.
Voice
And now we are going to go to our API that can read your text: Text to Speech API. This API will read text that you have typed into your HTML, if you use JavaScript. Here is an app that has these features:
https://historybro.github.io/group-project-1
Code is here:
https://github.com/historybro/group-project-1
The instructions use a script. The BetterDex information is read after it appends to the div, with JavaScript and specifying the div for our API to read. You can pick male or female voices with accents as well.
Project ideas: use in any project you want to add audio.
These are some reccomended API’s. If you have any other interesting API’s send them to me on my Twitter, and I might include them in my next list. And if you make a cool project, please tweet it to me. I enjoy seeing our reader’s projects.
