Webmaster Tools: Today in APIs: Twitter Monitoring, Python REST APIs and 17 New APIs

Today in APIs: Twitter Monitoring, Python REST APIs and 17 New APIs:

Twitter’s terms of service are causing a stir again. A developer provides a technical introduction to REST APIs in Python. Plus: four types of APIs, a user experience wake-up call to OAuth providers and 17 new APIs.

Are Twitter’s Terms Anti-Monitoring?

Monitoring platform Royal Pingdom reports that Twitter’s terms prohibit monitoring:

So in other words, making sure that Twitter’s API is available and for example receiving an alert if there is a problem with it is not acceptable use according to this TOS. That would be availability monitoring.
You would also be forbidden to time API requests to measure performance trends, i.e. you can’t set up monitoring to be made aware of when Twitter’s API suffers from slowdown.

The company also points out that there are no known examples of Twitter shutting down someone monitoring the API. Third party monitoring is an important part of trusting providers.
Disclosure: ProgrammableWeb has an API monitoring service

REST APIs in Python

In his presentation (embedded above), developer Nicola Iarocci provides a great introduction into how he has built RESTful APIs using Python, Flask and Mongo.

API News You Shouldn’t Miss

17 New APIs

Today we had 17 new APIs added to our API directory including a disk golf course review service, patient care platform, event aggregation service, drug price comparison service, stock quote service, shopping promotion service, content optimization service and city information resource. Below is more details on each of these new APIs.

ARKive API: ARKive.org hopes to promote the conservation of threatened species through wildlife imagery. The ARKive API provides a range of methods to retrieve species information and images from the ARKive database. The API uses the REST protocol and returns JSON and a personal API key is needed to access the service.

BACnet Help API: BACnet is a data communication protocol for building automation and control networks. It was designed to allow such networks to communicate with heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, lighting, access, and fire detection systems and their associated equipment.
BACnet Help assists users in making full use of their BACnet networks by letting them take snapshots of networks for immediate or future reference. BACnet Help's functions are accessible using REST calls in JSON format.

Disc Golf Course Review API: DGcoursereview.com provides an extensive database of disc golf courses across the United States which is accessible through the DGCourseReview API. This REST API allows users to build course details, ratings, hole information, and other data into sites and applications. An API key is required for use, and display requirements must be met for API use to be granted. The API has usage limit set to 100 calls per day during beta development, but once an app has been finalized a plan must be selected governing usage.

Drchrono API: Drchrono is an electronic health records app provider. Their products include a patient care platform, the On-Patient check-in app, and an electronic medical billing center. All three products can be integrated into a unified workflow and allow medical workers to customize their electronic approach to patient care. The Drchrono API exposes the entirety of their products functions for integration with new apps. The API is not public yet, but developers can register at the developer portal for notifications.

Evently API: The Evently API allows users to include the Evently event information on outside websites. Evently collects event information from over 1000 unique event listing services and organizes the data to be searchable by venue, genre and location. Using this REST API which returns in either JSON or XML, users can access this information and provide it on their website. An API Key is required for use.

GoodRx API: GoodRX.com provides price comparisons of prescription drugs, sourcing data from 70,000 pharmacies. The site offers both a Low Price API and a Price Comparison API. The GoodRX APIs uses HTTP calls to provide clients with the ability to get the latest pricing data on over 6,000 prescription medications. The service requires an API Key.

LearnSprout API: LearnSprout is a student information systems integration service. Their service is an API that eliminates the need for CSV files, manual data entry, and FTP servers. The LearnSprout API allows developers to create lightweight applications for educational institutions, and schools to simplify the integration of all of their data. The API is a RESTful protocol that returns student information as JSON-encoded data.

MBT Quote API: The MBT Quote API provides users access to financial stock quotes. MB Trading is an online financial trading platform catering to a variety of financial markets. The service provides quotes only, and can return information for a single ticker, the entire market, and everything in between, historical data is currently underdevelopment. The API sources data from NASDAQ Market, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), American Stock Exchange (AMEX), Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), INET / ARCA ECN books, CBOE Options quotes, CME Futures Quotes, CBOT Futures quotes and Foreign Currencies.

MyCloudPortal.NET API: MyCloudPortal.NET lets anyone create a web page portal. MyCloudPortal.NET API allows remote applications to connect and interact with a portal. The API connects with the following: web portal, webpage, blog, newsletter, social, email, and SMS.
The API utilizes REST protocol.

OpenCaching API: The OpenCaching API gives users the ability to query all of the data stored in the OpenCaching.com database. The service can also authorize users to update and write to the database. The API uses REST calls and will return JSON, XML, or plain text depending on which data request is sent. The OpenCaching service is a community based geocaching service with user generated content. The site is a subsidiary of Garmin Ltd.

Paperlex API: Paperlex is a management system for contract workflow. Their Paperlex OneDoc product allows users to upload and track their contracts through private dashboard. Different versions of multiple contracts can be maintained on the dashboard, as well as their different stages, such as “in negation,” “signed,” and more. The Paperlex API is a RESTful protocol that exposes the dashboard’s contract management functionality. It returns JSON-encoded data.

Points2Shop API: Points2shop works with advertisers to offer online promotions through referrals, banner and link placements online.
The Points2Shop APIs (REST & OAuth) allow users to utilize data collected by Points2Shop for presenting popular offers and testimonials. Users can also create toolbars or apps through the APIs that allow your site's users to reference their account on Points2Shop.
REST API users may: access testimonials, offers for most recent offers, most popular offers, shoutbox shouts.

OAuth API users may: access basic user information like: points, cash, merits, access completed offers and users' referrals.
An application must first be created to obtain API credentials.

RAMP Content API: The RAMP API allows users of the ramp service to access processed data content and metadata. RAMP is a cloud-based content optimization company that aims to ensure maximum discovery of user content. The API is accessible through REST calls and returns XML. A developer key is required for use and the documentation provides a list of methods as well as an API test feature.

SaferBus API: The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) makes the safety performance data of U.S. Department of Transportation registered bus companies available through the SaferBus API. This REST API returns in either JSON or XML, and was designed to allow developers to create applications that will make consumers more aware of the safety record of the bus companies with which they may choose to ride. The API requires an API Key and account to access.

Travis CI API: Travis CI is a hosted continuous integration service for the open source community. It provides users with multiple runtimes, data stores, etc., which allow libraries and applications to be easily tested against multiple runtimes and data stores. Since it is a free community service, Travis CI limits build duration to about 20 minutes.

WISEBED API: WISEBED provides a multi-level infrastructure of interconnected testbeds for large-scale wireless sensor networks. It was designed to enable research on a larger scale and of higher quality than would be possible using the testbeds individually. WISEBED's functions are accessible via SOAP-based APIs using the XML data format.

Woocation Cityinfo API: Woocation gives travelers information about the places they want to visit. The site does this by collecting as much data as it can about a place. The Woocation Cityinfo API provides information about cities worldwide.

From currency to

nearest domestic and international airports, it provides data which developers can pick from to make new applications.
NOTE : The nearest airport facility is only available for asia and oceanic continents as of now but we will be updating this for whole of the world in coming weeks very very soon.