2105 was an eventful year in the API space with several big name providers scaling back their open API initiatives, the growing awareness and tooling around API description languages, the rise of automated API and SDK solutions, and API consumption being brought to non-developers. What stories resonated with you? We provide a recap of our most popular stories from this year across news and analysis (page 1), API category roundups (page 2) and tutorials (page 3), based on what our readers clicked on and shared most often this year.
News and Analysis
Microsoft's Plans To Fork And Extend Node.js Alarms Developers
In May, Microsoft announced plans to fork and extend Node.js, which led some developers to express concern over what the move means for the long term future of Node.js. Microsoft’s history of forking and extending technologies in an attempt to lock-in developers cannot be forgotten, but the company’s latest moves under a new CEO could point to a new direction in philosophy.
6 Node.js Modules You Should Be Using
Perhaps reflecting the framework’s growing popularity, another Node.js story makes the list. Jeff Cogswell presents a list of Node modules useful to any application developer.
How Hackers Crack Supposedly Secure and Private APIs
API security (link) has been a topic of concern for some time and that remained true in 2015. Patricio Robles looked at the use of a Python console program called mitmproxy to reverse engineer high-profile APIs thus raising the question; can a private API ever truly be private?
Twitter's Jack Dorsey to Developers: We're Sorry. Let's Start Over.
Upon his return as CEO, one of Jack Dorsey’s first public moves was to apologize to the developer community that Twitter has alienated over the years. It sounded good, but actions will speak louder than words.
New JSON API Specification Aims to Speed API Development
Mark Boyd covered the release of the API specification, JSON API. It is designed to help speed up API design and development and acts as a specification for how a client should request resourced and how a server should respond in kind.
Supreme Court Delivers Major Blow To API Economy In Copyright Ruling
In the continuing saga that is Oracle vs. Google, the Supreme Court declined to hear Google’s appeal. The case, centered on whether Google's royalty-free use of the Java APIs in Android is allowable on the grounds of "fair-use” is back with the district court. For now it is business as usual, but the potential implications means the case bears watching.
The Future of Coding and Its Impact on Developers and API Providers
It’s an age old question; which languages are most in demand by employers? Patricio Robles reports on a study by Computer Science Zone that looks at the most popular languages by job openings as well as the average salary across the openings. Also included is commentary on the implications for API providers.
Why Parse Picked Google's Go Over Microsoft's C# To Replace Its Ailing Ruby Stack
Parse, which began developing in Ruby on Rails, hit scaling issues and switched to Google's Go, choosing the language over C#, Java, C++ and JRuby. Will McGrouther reviews a post by the Parse engineering team explaining why they made that choice.
Will Windows 10 Win Developers Back To Microsoft?
Microsoft has lost some mindshare to the likes of tech giants like Apple and Google, but also to companies that it never had to consider as competitors before. Will Windows 10, built under the guidance of CEO Satya Nadella be the platform to win developers back?
NASA Launches API Portal to Encourage Use of Data Sets
NASA launched its API portal in an effort to open up its data sets and corall its existing APIs. Mark Boyd looks at how this effort ties into the agency’s overall API strategy.
API Category Roundups
Top 10 Mapping APIs: Google Maps, Microsoft Bing Maps and MapQuest
The popularity of digital maps and the use of digital mapping tools has continued to grow with a number of venerable APIs providing the functionality.
Top 10 Machine Learning APIs: AT&T Speech, IBM Watson, Google Prediction
It was a big year for Machine Learning with IBM purchasing AlchemyAPI to bolster its Watson platform, Google opening TensorFlow to the public, and the growth of Azure and AmazonML among others.
Top 10 Travel APIs: Uber, TripAdvisor and Expedia
Business travel has been estimated as a $1.12 trillion global opportunity for apps and services so it’s little wonder developers are attracted to APIs in this category. The list includes APIs for travel expense tracking, booking, price comparisons and much more.
Top Weather APIs: An In-Depth Comparison
Following up on an earlier top 10 list of weather APIs, Janet Wagner provided a more detailed side by side feature comparison of three leading APIs in the category.
Top 10 Games APIs: EVE Online, Riot Games, Battle.net
At first glance gaming may not seem like a popular category but some reports estimate that
total global video games revenue will soon reach $93.18 billion USD.
Tutorials
How To Design Great APIs With API-First Design and RAML
API Design continues to drive conversation throughout the industry in an effort to ensure a great developer experience. Jen Riggins recaps a talk by MuleSoft CTO Uri Sarid that considers the pillars of API-first design and how RAML can facilitate it.
How To Build a Twitter "Hello World" Web App in Python
This year ProgrammableWeb started producing a series of tutorials – the “Hello World of APIs” – that demonstrates how to integrate an application with the most significant API providers in the industry. Here, Chris Wood details what a Python developer needs to know when building an application that consumes the Twitter REST API.
How To Implement Deep Linking on iOS
Deep Linking became a hot topic this year with giants such as Facebook, Google and Apple releasing tools to enable the technology for their apps. Doron Katz compared three platforms - Facebook AppLinks, UseButton's Deep Linking SDK and Tapstream's Deferred Linking - that enable deep linking for iOS.
How to Build an Events Database Using the ParseHub API, Python & Flask
This tutorial was contributed by Angelina Fomina of ParseHub. In it, she shows you how to scrape one event website, create an API for it, and build a simple Python and Flask web app on top of the data.
How to Create an Instagram Photo Printing App in Node.js
The Instagram API is always popular so this tutorial used it to create a photo printing app. Russell Taylor of Lob contributed this article that showed how to create a Node.js web application that prints and mails an Instagram photo. It uses Express.js as the framework and the Instagram and Lob Print APIs.