An Introduction to APIs | Hacker News Reader

An Introduction to APIs

zapier.com

167 pointsASquare21 comments

I find the layout to be very refreshing. Whoever put it together did a pretty sweet job since it doesn't feel like reading the usual technical guide on how to use XYZ.

Love this! More companies should do this. Teach your customers how to use your product.

Reminds me of this: http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/apis

I really respect these guys for taking on one of the most soul sucking dev jobs which is API integration and make it work. And they integrate hundreds of APIs! I would just go crazy if it was my day job.

Well, we are hiring! ;-)

https://zapier.com/blog/help-automate-business-zapier-jobs-a...

Great document, so I'll bite, since they deserve it:

What is this Zapier really? What are some examples of what it can do?

These services that basically sound something like "With our tools, you can do anything with data!!" always confuse me.

Until otherwise convinced, I'm of the opinion that if you can do "everything", you do nothing.

They connect APIs.

They've defined a bunch of methods for popular APIs. You can then pipe the results into another API.

e.g. Watch Disqus comments and auto send thank you mail

Send email attachments to your Dropbox

Create Trello cards from Evernote items

Checkout the Directory, then click on an item - you'll see all the possible interactions:

https://zapier.com/zapbook/

Oh wow, that's what I needed to see. Impressive. Almost overwhelming! Thanks

very well written and refreshing as others said. +1 absolutely!

This is beyond useful.

Shameless plug: Wrote recently about how API, platform thinking are changing the business in ways not imagined: http://www.vishalbiyani.com/api-economy/

Really nice presentation. Clear, professional, interesting and useful.

Nicely done.

Hey I like how they've blurred this DKJX3-7KBW5-237BT-K22TX-6XG7J key here in Chapter 5:

https://zapier.cachefly.net/static/CplbOk/images/learn/apis/...

... beyond any recognition!

Honestly I am not sure if it is such a good idea to post a license key for Windows 8 in public like that. I really hope it's fake ;)

The section on OAuth needs to be made better.

Of course, there is a lot of nuance in the OAuth spec(s), but we didn't feel the need to be that verbose for an "An Introduction to APIs". We'd love to hear more about what broad but important aspect of OAuth that we missed! We'll absolutely make revisions and updates.

Completely agree - that's the first time I've read a guide to oauth and actually understood it. So big thanks from me.

For OAuth, I highly recommend the OAuth Bible: http://oauthbible.com

Looks cool, but I really get a little tweaked when incomplete things are shared like this. To me, it's not useful if I can't read through and work the whole guide, which leaves this one somewhere between email-bait to get updates on the end or just regularly incomplete.

I see it as more of a multi-part blog series, where you can read the first few parts and wait for the rest, or you can wait until all parts have been written and read it all. In this case, it's better than a blog series, because you can be notified as soon as it's complete without having to keep checking back.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com