Find an API for anything with Mashape
The online world is moving to the cloud. From emails to storage and management, you name it and there’s a portal to take it to the cloud. And if one doesn’t keep up with the flow, one tends to drown out too soon. In the times of the Industrial Revolution, building a product from scratch after gathering requirements, monitoring production and testing quality was a challenging task; equally tedious was the marketer and seller’s job. Things changed when modern machines and techniques arrived. If we map the same trend to modern software development, cloud computing has changed things much the same way.
Today whether large or small, all businesses are going the cloud computing way to develop, test as well as sell software. While people starting afresh might have the edge, old players might need a hand with shifting existing methods to the cloud. It is in such a scenario that the need for a sort of a bridge arises. And cloud APIs serve as that bridge. If you have an application, website or product under development and you need to take it to the cloud, the simplest and ideal way to do it would be to have APIs for everything.
The next question would be where to get such cool APIs and how. The answer lies with Mashape.
Mashape – Building the API Economy
Mashape aims to create a revolution in software production by serving as the backbone of the distribution and consumption of data and services through APIs. It can be thought of as an online marketplace where you can buy APIs suiting to your different needs. Mashape makes it easy to distribute, monetize, manage and consume cloud APIs. And where exactly do they get such a huge storehouse of APIs? They’re contributed by a passionate community of developers from all over the world. With public APIs like Twilio, bitcoin and 23andMe under its belt, Mashape is swiftly capturing a large portion of the cloud API online marketplace sector.
Mashape plays a unique role of bringing API providers and consumers in sync. As a provider, you can contribute APIs for free or for remuneration. As a consumer you can browse through thousands of APIs for different purposes and buy the ones you want – simple and awesome!
In short – need an API? Get it from Mashape!
This is how it works
If you’re an API consumer, visit Mashape and click on the green button in the center that says “Explore APIs”. You will then be directed to a page that lists all APIs available for consumption. You can customize the APIs you wish to see through the sorting filters Relevant, Recent, Popular and My APIs (for existing customers) or through Price filters All, Free, Premium and Paid. There are numerous categories that define the APIs at the left hand side of the screen and you may choose to browse only a particular category there. But it would be advisable to look through the entire collection of APIs to be absolutely sure of the one you need.
Once you find an API that interests you, click on it and you’ll see a page displaying details about it and instructions for consuming it. In addition to basic formalities like applying for authentication keys etc, here you’ll be asked to sign up if you wish to consume the API.
Once you’ve signed up, the button prompting you to sign up will change to a drop down having the options – ‘Default Application’ and ‘+ Create New Application’. Select the appropriate option and click on Test Endpoint’ to kick off. On clicking this button a push-out menu will appear displaying the API code from Mashape that you can download or copy and use wherever you want.
Mashape also offers you the opportunity to see the number of developers behind the API and number of people following it. Moreover, you can also report the API as broken if it doesn’t work for you. In this aspect, Mashape makes dealing with APIs extremely easy and crystal clear.
If you’re an API developer, you can contribute your API by clicking on the “Add your API” button on the main screen. On clicking the button you’ll be directed to a page where you have the option to straightaway import (upload) your API documentation or supply the Base URL if your API is already up and running elsewhere. Accompany that with a cool name for the API and click on the “Add new API” button. That’s it, you’re good to go!
Pros Vs Cons
Mashape is an online tool that comes with many plus points.
- For starters, if you have a website or portal that you wish to bring at par with other portals, you needn’t look further that Mashape for readymade APIs of some of the most popular supplementing applications (Spotify, ESPN, Bitcoin, BestBuy, Imgur and many more).
- Consuming APIs is child’s play (literally); all you need to do is sign-up.
- It is an extremely attractive tool for both API developers and consumers alike.
- It serves as one of the best online marketplaces for APIs.
- It’s a boon for API developers where they can showcase their talent and earn popularity or money or both.
- Online means easy access and omnipresence.
- It offers features like application monitoring, API analytics and alert, quota and invoice management, and security.
And the biggest advantage of this tool is that you can use it for free for a large number of free APIs. Of course you need to pay for premium APIs but with a collection as huge as Mashape has, if you don’t have your heart set on a particular API, you can easily find a great replacement of a premium API in the free section.
We still have to figure out a con with Mashape! It’s so downright useful that finding a loophole in it is proving to be quite challenging.
Need an #API? Get it from @mashape.com! Explore one of the largest marketplaces for cloud APIs mashape.com/ via @supermonitoring
Final Verdict
Mashape is a win-win tool for people who’re in love with APIs. So if you’ve never checked it out before, do it NOW! There’s literally so much packed in there that you’ll find it to be a world in itself.
