apievangelist

An open-source, spec-driven integration framework that elevates any public or private API into governed, domain-driven capabilities usable by developers, copilots, and agents.

The future is a diverse API toolbox (HTTP, Websockets, GraphQL, SOAP, HTTP/2 & HTTP/3) with a variety of patterns (request / response, pub/sub, hypermedia, gRPC). OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema will dominate the landscape.

I am copyrighting the API API, Patent API, and Copyright API, and patenting the process of copyrighting and API, and patenting an API.

I'm working on APIs.json collections of deprecated APIs, as well as working on APIs.json references to building blocks like pricing, and TOS...then allow for inverse searching for APIs that do not have pricing, or have TOS that are not friendly. The next project after API Commons is to take TOS Didn't Read work and incorporate as part of APIs.json, so that APIs.io will have this type of data to search by.

Bret Victor has influenced a lot of my thinking that has gone into APIs.json and API Commons, and the work I've done with EFF on the Oracle v Google case, and how we need to get APIs to the next step. Thanks for the observation.

It doesn't offer anything useful? Really? I spent almost 80 hours hand crafting the APIs.json for this release. I'm building federal gov versions of APIs.io with this to drive traffic to vital gov resources, and working to priortize the APIs.json + Swagger for vital non-profit resources ilke DPLA. WTF have you done notastartup to further the API community? eh? Links please!!

With APIs.io you can launch your own ProgrammableWeb. ;-)

I agree that hypermedia is a more optimal solution for API discovery. APIs.io + APIs.json + machine readable formats like Swagger will provide us with a bridge between what we have, and what we should have (aka hypermedia). We'd all love to have a perfect reality, but unfortunately we get the one we have. ;-)

Coming up next. :-)

I will coordinate with them Frank. I've been working with them for stories. Good suggestion.

As we add Swagger specs for each one, that is exactly what will be possible. Baby steps.

Using the APIs.json format you can reference any machine readable format like Swagger. We are currently working on generating Swagger for each of the APIs currently listed. By February there will be Swagger for most of them listed.

+1 Charles. Post Mortem would be soooo valuable, but agree with phil on likeliness.

I think the success and features of Github is getting undeniable. There is a social graph emerging that doesn't exist anywhere else.

I thrive off people actively correcting the writing on my blog and my code. It is essential to my growth.

Totally agree with you.

Quantified self APIs is one of the fastest growing areas of APIs in the last 6 months. I think this will be one of the quickest paths for APIs to penetrate the masses.

After quantified self it will be other home, environmental and auto APIs that developers can use.

I second Stripe, Twilio, Tokbox, Dwolla as leaders in good implementation--then add Full Contact, Iron.io, Etsy, Factual and Foursquare to that stack.

But definitely look at the oldest developer areas with eBay, Salesforce and Amazon. They have been doing it a while.

Some great points, countering Twitter's points for the crackdown. Twitter could accomplish the same goals with a TOS and branding guidelines that included the ecosystem. One that would let users know when they are using a Twitter app vs. 3rd party, while also allowing innovation.

Agreed, but this distinction isn't made when bashing API opportunities. The haters on this thread and others state developers are fools for depending on APIs...not just APIs who have products that exist outside their APIs.

What Twitter is doing is extremely damaging to developers and the perception of APIs. But let's not bundle all APIs as terrible. The Twilio's, Stripe's and other progressive APIs know how to treat devs and respect them. We just need to make sure we are equally vocal about the good and the bad in the space.

Its an information network for humans and otherwise. Its simplicity + #hashtags makes work well for distributed messaging.

agreed there is not enough metrics on what is out there, where the opportunities are? I know John and the team @ PW is working hard to track on all of this, but its good to see more detail get pulled from someone external.

If anyone else wants to help slice and dice and make sense of it all, ProgrammableWeb has an API....

I'm not looking to add anything to theirs. Thats why I link to them. I'm looking to get discussion here and on Twitter...while I formulate my own thoughts...and more analysis. That's why I said...your the detail of this post.

You guys are the blog detail. Your comments are the reason for short post.

In relationship to this post whats everyone thoughts on smart docs like Posterous has? aka Mashery I/O docs, Swagger?

It takes the API explorer model to the next level....and integrates with documentation.

You get up to date docs + API explorer + code stubs. Is this the future?

Also see where they release a junk API as "open" while selling accessing to the same data behind the scenes.

All of these types of APIs need to be identified. We need a way to high grade them and make it known when they don't have any value.

Extreme transparency

oooh. I think that would be a popular one. Who still has the data? Who will keep updated when new data gets leaked. Winner!

Extremely true observation. Even though I'm optimistic about what we can do with these APIs....you are definitely spot on in your objection.

Let's keep the heat on with government agencies to keep opening up data....complete sets...and maintain and keep active.

Don't sweat it. Hacker News audience loves to flag things if it doesn't 100% relate to their world.

Readers here won't see the correlation of all the research I did for this post that included FTP, WebSockets and beyond. Because they'll all be separate stories.

For the record I wrote the story because it struck a cord in my research. :)