Practical API usage for rapidly creating MVPs
Learn how to effectively use popular APIs to build your MVP even faster with real-word examples in Laravel.
Or get early access for a special price.
Leverage publicly available APIs to create your MVP quicker than ever
Gone are the days when we have to build all the features of functionality of a web application ourselves.
We are able to leverage hosted services thru APIs so that we can focus on the core value of our products.
From social media services, geolocation, mapping, analytics, storage to finance and sporting events APIs can provide you data and services for almost anything.
Many companies provides extenstive documentation for the APIs. Hundreds of pages of documentation, describing in painful detail each and every endpoint.
While reference documentation is necessary, it doesn't supply the much needed instructions on how best to use, cache and store data from the APIs and integrate them into your application.
About the author
My name is Mubashar Iqbal but you can call me Mubs. I've been writing software since I was 8 years old, professionally for over 20 years.
I've written and/or consumed APIs in most of my projects during this time. You can see a list of my side projects on I Worked On.
Some of my favorite projects involving pull data from services I use and presenting that information in new and interesting ways.
I've worked with many different APIs and am usually frustrated at the lack of actionable documentation. I decided to start Practical API as a way to provide a guide into the practical use of APIs.
“Mubs, one of the most prolific indie makers I know, has built several creative products using the Product Hunt API.”
“I've worked with Mubs on several projects over the years and he's the most helpful maker I know. I'm excited that he's going to help others and make working with APIs simpler.”
“I’ve worked with Mubashar on numerous projects in the past. His knowledge, experience and passion for development is infectious. Without Mubs, I wouldn’t be the founder of a successful social media startup so I owe him a lot. I have a lot of time for Mubs and would gladly work on any project with him in the future.”
“I'm a non-technical maker, and Mubs is always the first person I reach out to for new projects. His technical abilities mixed with a curiosity for learning, making, and sharing is rare and invaluable.”
The MVPsSubject to change
Rather than just talking about how the APIs work, we'll be building MVPs that make use of APIs.
You'll get access to the code for these projects, as well as details on how to customize and deploy these to kickstart your own projects.
While these MVP's may not be exactly what you need for your project, we'll discuss all the thought behind how and why we're building what we are. This will guide you in deciding how to build your own MVP.
What we'll be building:
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Job board
A very effective way to monitize many existing projects. We'll use integrate payment providers to collect payments and share new jobs automatically on social media.
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Content Aggregator
Curation is king in a content world. Use APIs to quickly aggregate content from many sources, then select the best to publish.
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Micro social network
The future is small. Build micro social networks quickly with APIs that do the bulk of the work.
Help me decide
Pre-launch bundle customers will be able to help me decide which MVPs to build in our slack.
The APIsSubject to change
Here are some of the API's I'll be with with...
Open Authorization (OAuth)
Sometimes we want to use the login details from a 3rd party, Facebook or Twitter for example.
In some cases that's all we want, in other cases we need this to access data the user has saved to that platform.
Although Open Authorization is an open standard, there are a couple of different versions and knowing how to work with both is important.
Social Media
I'll be covering the top Social Media platforms: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
I'll be discussing aggregating posts from users or by topic, displaying your own posts from those platforms.
Finally we'll cover posting content to those platforms to aid in automation or to simplify distribution.
Financial
In many instances we need to collect payment from our users. I'll look at the 2 most popular services for doing this: Stripe and Paypal.
We may also dip into finacial services related to crypto currencies.
Entertainment
The vast amount of data related to sporting events and other entertinment can pose it's own unique problems.
I'll select a couple of APIs to dig into to display historical statistics and upcoming sporting events.
I'll look at music, movie and television related data APIs.
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Or get early access for a special price.