API is an acronym for Application Programming Interface. In simple words, we can say that an API delivers a user response to a system and sends the system’s response back to a user. One of the most common examples is weather apps, whenever we search the weather of any specific place the apps do not gather the information by themselves but the information is collected through the API of any weather service and the results are then displayed to us.
How API works? – The working of APIs is simple as depicted in the below image, let’s understand it with a practical example. Suppose you are trying to log in to your neveropen account from your device (System1) so when you enter your credentials then API makes a request to the neveropen server (System2) and then API sends back a response to your device enabling you to log in to your account easily. So basically API acts as a connecting channel that allows the transmission of data from system to system in a hassle-free manner.
Why use API?
- APIs provide a huge amount of functionality, which can be used to develop our own applications or websites.
- APIs make our work faster and make the entire workflow smoother.
- APIs provide greater flexibility in delivering services and allows them to be shared and distributed more easily.
Hopefully, now the basics of APIs are clear, so let’s discuss some cool APIs that you can use in your projects.
1. Bored API
Bored? Try using this API that will suggest different activities to fight off your monotonous lifestyle, the best part is that the activities are not bounded just to a particular topic but there is lots of diversity which make it interesting like “Learn how to make a website”, “Organize a cluttered drawer”, “Plant a tree”, “Compliment someone” and a lot more. In this era of “work from home”, this is an apt API that you can use to build an “activity generator” that generates random fun activities.
2. Meme Generator API – Imgflip
Who doesn’t like memes? Almost every social media platform is occupied by memes, even companies use memes for advertisements and increasing engagement with the audience. This API has a variety of range of meme templates that you can edit according to your choice and make memes easily.
3. Responsive Voice API
Are you interested in voice enabling your site with just a few lines of code? It doesn’t necessarily require machine learning and virtual reality. The responsive voice API allows you to transform any text into speech. As voice search is becoming an essential component of eCommerce and virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri are becoming more common so a project based on voice recognition would be quite interesting.
4. MealDB API
It is an open, crowd-sourced database of recipes from around the world. If you are planning to make a food-related website then this API is perfect for you, it consists of different food items its ingredients, recipes with step-by-step instructions. It also suggests a variety of dishes by just mentioning the available ingredients.
5. NASA API
It provides many amazing APIs like you can get the weather on Mars, see photos of the space or listen to sounds of space. It also provides an API called Astronomy Picture of the day that shows one new picture from space every day.
6. Trivia Questions API – jService
This API consists of a collection of 156,800 trivia questions, which you can use to build your next side projects like a trivia or a quiz app. It has questions from various categories like television, animals, sports, food, quotations, and many more, it also has “stupid answers” categories which consist of questions that have answers which are correct but at the same time sounds stupid like :
Question: It’s the highest mountain in Kenya
Answer: Mount Kenya
7. Unsplash API
Most of us are familiar with the website Unsplash which provides high-definition images and photos for free that you can download and use for your projects but only a few know about the Unsplash API, you would be amazed to know that even unsplash.com runs on this API. So if you are planning to make a wallpaper app or an app that requires stock photos then this API is all that you need.
8. QuickChart API
Charts make projects/reports visually more attractive. The QuickChart API generates chart and graph images, these static chart images can be embedded in SMS, emails, reports, and chatbots. Charts are not the only thing, this API also generates QR codes and PDFs so you can even use this API for your next project.
9. OMDb API
The OMDb or Open Movie Database API is a RESTful web service that is used to obtain any movie-related information. This API offers methods for searching movies or TV shows by episodes, titles, ratings, keywords, and more. So if you are planning to make a project that requires movies or TV shows data or a movie search app then this API is a perfect fit as it is easy to use.
10. GIPHY API
If you want to bring the engaging power of GIFs to your app then GIPFY is all you need, it provides access to an ever-growing content library of GIFs and stickers. Whether it is WhatsApp or Telegram GIFs are everywhere so a project like a chat app would get a perfect touch by embedding this API.
Bonus API: Who doesn’t like something extra? so apart from the 10 APIs listed above here is one extra API
Github Public API:
It contains a huge list of interesting APIs on various topics such as animals, anime, books, cryptocurrency, health, music, shopping and the list goes on, so you can explore it too for your projects.
APIs not only add extra functionality to your application but also enhances its efficiency. You can play with the above-mentioned API, there are tons of other APIs available on the internet you just need creativity to incorporate it in your next project,
