Exposing Dictionaries From My API Collections

I’m playing around with different ways to compose, and examine collections of APIs. I have a database of over 2500 API that I keep an eye on, and for some of them I’ve been generating Swagger specs, and using APIs.json to compose them into collections. I did this with 10 APIs I'm calling my utility stack, because they are some of the fundamental utility style resources I depend on to make the API Evangelist network function.

I generated Swagger specs for the 10 following APIs:

  • bitly Data API Search
  • FullContact Name API
  • FullContact Location Normalization API
  • Pinboard All Posts API
  • AngelList Startup API
  • Wordnik WordList API
  • AlchemyAPI Keyword and Term Extraction
  • AlchemyAPI Text Extraction API
  • AlchemyAPI Author Extraction API

Then using these Swagger definitions, I outputted any parameters that are used for endpoints, as well as the fields for all of the APIs underlying data model. I grouped all of these fields together and created a sort of dictionary for my utility stack API collection. By doing this I’m learning a lot about the vocabulary that each of these API providers are using, as well as beginning to see patterns across similar APIs, like text extraction APIs, and URL shortener APIs.

In a perfect world, APIs would use commonly established vocabularies like schema.org, but in the imperfect API world we are given, I’m enjoying taking a look at the sort of API slang that has emerged across the various types of popular APIs we are adopting. API definition formats like Swagger give me a great way to define the surface are of APIs, and these exercises allow me to push forwards tools and approaches to understanding this new landscape.

The more APIs I generate Swagger definitions for, and the more tools I develop to analyze the landscape, the better I will get at communicating the interesting patterns I’m seeing across the API space, and hopefully extract some blueprints that I can follow in my own API design work.