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Comment by rozenmd | Hacker News Reader

(This doesn't apply to every API in the list, but) having made the mistake of using a public API (that later went offline) for examples in a book of mine, never again.

These days I keep an API deployed on a subdomain I control.

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  > having made the mistake of using a public API (that later went offline) for examples in a book of mine

Literally a tale as old as time. The Old Testament references a command from God, that is not contained in the Old Testament itself.

That explains Mel Brooks' 5 missing commandments. Where's the undef ref?

Do you have an example for this? Just curious

Not sure which specific example they're referring to, but another example is that, according to tradition, the prophet Isaiah was martyred by placing him inside a hollow tree that was then sawn down. This appears to be referenced by the Apostle Paul in Hebrews 11:37 even though there is no description of Isaiah's death in the Old Testament:

"They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented;"

Not literally a tale as old as time. Time existed for billions of years before humans.

A tale as old as tales, then.

The possibility of an internet resource disappearing exists regardless of the resource type. Running an API Forwarder that could act as a common target for all your APIs might work. Give it the request, and it passes it on, records success, optionally sends a notification if an endpoint that previously succeeded is now failing.

Add a fancy feature of redirection with format changing to handle replacing dead APIs with new ones transparently.

If anybody makes one of these, they should totally make it a free public API. I'd use it, and I'm not certain if that would just be ironically.

  > Running an API Forwarder that could act as a common target for all your APIs might work.

That just sounds like adding another point of failure into the chain.

I'd say it only makes sense if you control the forwarder.

But it's one that you can fix.

Maybe we can convince IANA to host a simple API, on example.com as well.

I’ve seen books reference internet archive.

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