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Q&A

Welcome to Codidact Meta!

Codidact Meta is the meta-discussion site for the Codidact community network and the Codidact software. Whether you have bug reports or feature requests, support questions or rule discussions that touch the whole network – this is the site for you.

Comments on How should a Codidact public API work?

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How should a Codidact public API work?

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I'm planning to add a public API to Codidact so people can make applications that read Codidact data automatically.

Features and purposes

I have my own purposes in mind for this[1], but there are many other potential uses. Before I start building this, I'd like to hear what features you would like the API to have, and what purposes you might use it for.

General thoughts

Even if you are not planning anything yet, I would still like to hear your thoughts on what might be useful for the future. I'm hoping this discussion will help avoid designing an API that is too specific, or that needs breaking changes later.

Whatever your thoughts, please share them. This could be any of the following or anything else you want to bring up:

  • Ideas for projects you might make one day
  • Thoughts on the structure of an API
  • Things to bear in mind / avoid (I'm new to this, so things that are obvious to you may not be obvious to me)
  • Preferred data format(s)
  • What to include from the start and what can wait until later
  • Limits, such as how many results to permit in a single response (like pagination) and how to handle requesting more

  1. I'll add my own personal API requirements in an answer. Please comment on the answer if there's a better approach I should consider. ↩︎

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4 comment threads

Can be it used with "Approach zero" math-aware search engine? (1 comment)
Licencing (19 comments)
What kind of API? (3 comments)
Reference (1 comment)
What kind of API?
matthewsnyder‭ wrote about 1 year ago

Are you talking about HTTP REST API or something like a Python package?

trichoplax‭ wrote about 1 year ago

I was aiming for something that can be accessed from any programming language, so most likely HTTP.

Karl Knechtel‭ wrote about 1 year ago

Nowadays, when a "public API" is being discussed for a website, it should be assumed to mean an HTTP (ideally REST-compliant) API unless explicitly marked otherwise.