Ask HN: What are some APIs you wish existed? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are some APIs you wish existed?

26 pointsleandot26 comments

An API for finding car parts and service instructions, something like a Chilton manual service where you could provide vehicle information and it would return a list of parts based on filter criteria along with text or a link about how to perform certain services or repairs for those parts.

It could include things like torque specs, volumes for fluids, etc.

This is really interesting to me -- I'm super into working on/learning about old motorcycles (and cars), and it's always pretty difficult to find parts/procedures/torque specs/etc for a vehicle, unless you can find the factory service manual online. I'm not sure to what extent (if any) that data is covered by copyright, but if it's not, this seems like an excellent idea that I'd be interested in working on.

I'm glad someone else finds this problem interesting! I'm not totally sure in terms of copyright about repairs and parts, but it's something that could be looked into.

I've mainly thought about this while trying to find some sort of information online for a specific year/model only to find some loosely related YouTube videos and articles that leave out certain steps or are similar but not quite the same parts. And most of the time there isn't any mention of what the torque specs are for certain bolts, etc., because most of the time the presnters are "feeling it out", but I'm a stickler for doing things as close to the factory spec as possible...

I feel like this would also be useful for mechanics/repair shops. You could serve the data via an app/online service that mechanics could reference.

Obviously I have many ideas about this. =)

I assume you are looking for some product to build, but 99% of the time what people want is access to accurate and complete data. Provide quality data and you can offer it up as a wordstar text dump via ftp and people will use it.

This is all just a long winded way of saying focus on the data and leave the API till later.

Yes and no. If you have the most complete and accurate data about something people need, then this is typically a very good situation and can be productized in different ways (via APIs or not). But there are so many other types of things that can be exposed via APIs that do not fall into the data category:

  - Language translation, detection 
  - Emulating real-world - like the Stripe Card API
  - Converting unstructured to structured data - e.g. free-form text dates to structured formats
  - Any kind of computation actually

There are even examples in the thread that speak against this argument - the data for project Gutenberg is clearly there and good but people do want to have a better way to access it.

As to my intentions, I am not looking to build a product, at least not now, but I've profited from both APIs in the wild and from good discussions on HN so I am happy to start a meaningful thread.

I'd love to see a full API behind Project Gutenberg, and ideally one that allows full querying of metadata and book text.

Out of curiosity, why would you need that kind of API?

The available content has been used in loads of different applications, from text analysis, to linguistics libraries, to spam detection.

There's a lot of valuable information there, but it's not easy to get at it. A public API with text search would accelerate opportunities for new applications to be built on top of the text.

As for myself, I find the Project Gutenberg site to be a bit clunky, so a public API would allow someone to build a wrapper around the metadata and content. In my mind, a Project Gutenberg reader with full text-search and Medium-style paragraph comments would be a great resource.

An API to government institutions, Home Affairs, Tax Services, Motor Vehicle department etc.

And All Government ( Public ) Data.

https://data.gov.uk/

Thats great start but is more of a data api than an interaction api. I am thinking more along the lines of being able to programmatically interact with my government

Right, like paying taxes via an API? That would be cool.

Exactly!

Exhaustive GTIN barcode API, with at least a title, description and image. Deduped!

A unified "Utilities meter usage API" where you could plug in the meter number and retrieve the current and historical 12-24 months usage data, no matter the provider or the utility/commodity.

A LinkedIn API and an API for my bank.

For banking check out https://plaid.com/

> an API for my bank

If you live in Europe, this will come later this year. Google 'psd2'.

PSD2 is bullshit.

We technically have it in the UK already. The problem is that it requires a bunch of certifications (equivalent of PCI-DSS) to get access, so while you can get big companies can get access, you still can't get a personal access token for your own account.

In some countries like the UK there are modern banks with APIs like Monzo or Starling Bank.

Global current and historical satellite imagery by day. Call the API with coordinates, desired date, and resolution and return a satellite image for analysis.

Baby tracker api with support for multiple babies.

Or even kids tracker!!!

Doing what? :)

Kindle API

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