10 Fun APIs to Use For Your Next Project
#javascript#webdev#todayilearned#productivity
Henry Boisdequin

Henry Boisdequin @hb

About: Programmer x Swimmer | React Dev, Machine Learning Enthusiast, Rustacean

Joined:
Oct 12, 2020

10 Fun APIs to Use For Your Next Project

Publish Date: Dec 30 '20
2106 71

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 to you. Think of an API as a messenger. As you can imagine, APIs are extremely useful when creating a project. I've curated a list of 10 fun APIs to use for your next project. Let's dive right into it!

1. Exchange Rate API

Exchange Rate API is a free currency conversion tool with over 160 currencies. Some of its pros include: easy to use, global exchange rates, ultra-fast, and accurate conversions.

Project Idea:
Create a website which allows a user to put in a currency and value and have it convert to another currency of a user's choice.

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2. DEV API

This is one of my personal favourites. This API is extremely powerful. You can get published articles, post articles, get comments, see users followers, see a user's tags that they follow, and much more.

Project Idea:
Create a website which showcases your articles on dev.to!

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3. Spotify API

Like the DEV API, this API is very powerful. With Spotify's API, you can get metadata about music artists, albums, tracks, and user-related data.

Project Idea:
Create a website which can search Spotify with an image of an album cover.

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4. YouTube API

The YouTube API is the official API for Google's YouTube. With this API, you can request for YouTube data and embed YouTube videos, the subscribe button, and more.

Project Idea:
Create a website which gives a YouTube video based on what a user searches (search app).

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5. Twitter API

The Twitter API is the official API for the Twitter social media app. This API allows you to retrieve and engage with tweets, users, and more.

Project Idea:
Create a Node.js Twitter bot which can post Tweets, follow users, and do more actions on your account.

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6. Twilio API

The Twilio API is extremely powerful and can be used for many things. I have personally used it to send messages from my Twilio phone number to another phone number.

Project Idea:
Create a Node.js bot which uses your Twilio phone number to greet your friends via messages when their birthday occurs.

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7. Google Maps API

Using Google's Map service API, you can do things from embedding maps in your website to, for example, receiving a set of directions to a specific place.

Project Idea:
Create a restaurant search app which gives the user directions to the nearest restaurant.

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8. Edamam API (Recipes)

The Edamam API is an API which gives back recipes for what a user would like to cook.

Project Idea:
Create a website which asks a user for what they would like to eat and returns a recipe on how to make it.

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9. Stripe API

The Stripe API is an API which allows users to make payments and send it to your credit card. Its an extremely popular API for any websites which require payments.

Project Idea:
Create an e-commerce site which allows users to pay for goods on the website.

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10. Finnhub API (Stock Market)

The Finnhub API allows you to retrieve data from the stock market. This API is trusted by many reputable companies such as Google and Tyson.

Project Idea:
Create an app which provides the latest stock values for the companies in the fortune 500 companies list.

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Conclusion

Thanks for reading. I hope that know you know what an API is and some fun APIs to use with your next project! Let me know, in the comments, if you know of any other APIs which would be cool and fun to use.

Henry

Comments 71 total

  • Sandor Dargo
    Sandor DargoDec 30, 2020

    I also like DEV Api, I'm building something around it for the #dohackathon, you might be interested in it:

    sandordargo

    DevAnalytics at DOHackathon: cards everywhere

    Sandor Dargo ・ Dec 24 '20 ・ 1 min read

    #dohackathon #angular #typescript #devanalytics
  • Andika Kurniawan
    Andika KurniawanDec 30, 2020

    Nice article. Btw, I really want to use some API from above actually...

  • José Pinheiro
    José PinheiroDec 30, 2020

    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/

  • tq-bit
    tq-bitDec 30, 2020

    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
      Henry BoisdequinDec 30, 2020

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

  • nightwolfdev
    nightwolfdevDec 30, 2020

    I also like PokeApi and SWAPI.

    • Henry Boisdequin
      Henry BoisdequinDec 30, 2020

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

  • Karthikeyan
    KarthikeyanDec 30, 2020

    Well-compiled list.

    Found this repo has the list of APIs

    github.com/public-apis/public-apis

  • Saul Burgos Davila
    Saul Burgos DavilaDec 30, 2020

    Thanks for the link

  • Liyas Thomas
    Liyas ThomasDec 31, 2020

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

    GitHub logo hoppscotch / hoppscotch

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

    • Henry Boisdequin
      Henry BoisdequinDec 31, 2020

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

    • Dr-Grey
      Dr-GreyJan 2, 2021

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

    • nnguyenminh
      nnguyenminhJan 3, 2021

      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
        Liyas ThomasJan 3, 2021

        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.

        GitHub logo hoppscotch / hoppscotch-extension

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

        • nnguyenminh
          nnguyenminhJan 3, 2021

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

          • Liyas Thomas
            Liyas ThomasJan 3, 2021

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

            • gshah2020
              gshah2020Jan 3, 2021

              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

    • Tom George
      Tom GeorgeJan 12, 2021

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

  • adriens
    adriensDec 31, 2020

    I also have a lot of fun with Twilio 👍

  • Alvaro Montoro
    Alvaro MontoroDec 31, 2020

    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
      Alvaro MontoroDec 31, 2020

      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
        Henry BoisdequinDec 31, 2020

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

  • Victor Olaoye
    Victor OlaoyeJan 1, 2021

    This is really cool. Love it

  • Joshua Alpuerto
    Joshua AlpuertoJan 1, 2021

    FWIW, you can also check this blog 😁

    You can also check this public list of API's

    Hope this is helpful 😊

  • Thao Thi Ngoc Truong
    Thao Thi Ngoc TruongJan 1, 2021

    Hi there,
    Thanks for the post. Have anyone here knowns any free API for food/ingredients' nutrition? Could you please to advise me?

  • Bashar Abdullah
    Bashar AbdullahJan 2, 2021

    Nice and refreshing. Thanks

  • Dr-Grey
    Dr-GreyJan 2, 2021

    Thanks for sharing, nice collection of apis can be used for various projects.

  • Ritwik Shanker
    Ritwik ShankerJan 2, 2021

    You can check out hell lot of API's here too.
    Link - github.com/public-apis/public-apis

  • Roman Sanchez
    Roman SanchezJan 2, 2021

    Thank you!¡ great post

  • Nyakuri Levite
    Nyakuri LeviteJan 2, 2021

    Thank you for your support, I am really likes Google map API

  • Alex Rampp
    Alex RamppJan 2, 2021

    Not to forget the Star Wars API swapi.dev/

  • Davyd McColl
    Davyd McCollJan 2, 2021

    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

  • mwangiKibui
    mwangiKibuiJan 2, 2021

    Thanks a lot for the content

  • guptaarth87
    guptaarth87Jan 3, 2021

    Thank u the article is really helpful!

  • ejeh daniel
    ejeh danielJan 3, 2021

    I will try all of this in this first quarter of this year. Thanks bro for this

  • Peter Rietveld
    Peter RietveldJan 3, 2021

    I love JSON Server: github.com/typicode/json-server

  • Abhimanyu
    AbhimanyuJan 5, 2021

    Thanks for sharing!

  • Shashank Daima
    Shashank DaimaJan 8, 2021

    Wow ... I got many many possible projects for 2021 thanks.man...

  • Marcel Cruz
    Marcel CruzJan 25, 2021

    Awesome list, thanks for sharing!

    In case you're interested, I've put up some free APIs on devresourc.es/tools-and-utilities/..., so feel free to check them out too! :)

  • Yahya Amin
    Yahya AminMar 5, 2021

    Great collection

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