APIFinder - Your Guide to APIs

Posted by Robert Bazinet on Apr 18, 2008

Sections

Architecture & Design,

Development,

Enterprise Architecture

Topics

Ruby ,

Web 2.0 ,

Java ,

.NET ,

.NET Framework

Tags

VB 6 ,

Visual Basic.NET ,

C++ ,

C# ,

Java SE

Developers today are constantly creating applications that consume services of other web sites.  Consuming these services requires figuring out and understanding the sometimes complex Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). 

Enter APIFinder, a web site dedicated to bringing together various APIs from across the Internet.

What is APIFinder? APIFinder is a growing index of various application programming interfaces (APIs). An API provides a set of instructions that you can use to make new software interoperate with existing applications. This site is also a place to share ideas and advice on how to use APIs in your programming. This site grows in part through community contribution so please submit your favorite APIs as well as articles and API-related projects today!

The web site consists of both and API Index:

You can browse our API index by its "function" (i.e. what it does, for example "search") or by the languages that it supports. Because of the popularity these days of Web 2.0-style APIs—free Web service-based APIs that allows you to pull a service into your application over the Web using XML—you'll find the largest number of APIs today listed under Web services. But we can include a listing for any kind of API, including Visual Basic, Java, Windows, Apple, and more. You can browse the API index for these types of APIs using the "language" categories, which on this site is used loosely to describe the platform or environment an API is suited for.

And articles related to API's:

While the API index itself is a great resource, we also want to provide support to help you succeed in using APIs. For that reason the site also includes articles. An article can be documentation, reviews, mashups, examples, or even an interview or opinion. Anything that will help another developer get ideas about how to implement an API or will give them more context about a given API. An article doesn't need to be long. A few paragraphs and maybe a screen shot or some code may be just enough to help someone else get their own code flowing.

Each article is semantically related to the API(s)s that it is about. So you can see whether we have any articles about a given API just by going to the API's page on the site.

APIFinder provides developers with the ability to search for APIs specifications, articles and reviews.  They also provides category breakdowns by both Function and Language/Operating System.  Function categories include:

• E-Commerce
• Search
• Communications
• Personal Information Management
• Sales and Marketing
• Graphics/Games
• Programming/Development
• Wireless
• Financial

The APIs can also be found by the platform or language being developed on, including:

• Java
• .NET
• VB6
• C/C++
• PHP

The web site does a nice job of publishing the latest APIs on the front of their web site along with the latest articles written for the APIs.  Also maintained is an RSS feed for the most recently added APIs and an RSS feed for recent APIs, articles and reviews.

APIFinder is also community driven so developers can submit their own APIs or ones they come across not yet on the site.  The site is a great reference for just about any current API on the web today including those from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter and so many others.  For more information please see visit the APIFinder web site.

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   Also look at gotApi.com

   by Roshan Shrestha

   I prefer gotApi.com, which seems to be easier to user.

   Reply

2. Back to top

   gotapi.com

   by Jason Warner

   gotapi.com is MUCH better and easier to use.

   Reply

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