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API Nightmares

Post 1

Pastey

Well, not quite true nightmare status, but they can be a serious pain in the bum.

Icotoan (which I've probably spelled wrong) did a great job going through the DNA APIs seeing which ones worked, and which ones didn't, and which ones sort of did but you couldn't quite be sure. I've been working with their findings to look at other ways of getting and using the data that they return.

Unfortunately, I think that the people that wrote them either tried to be too general, or too specific. I'm not actually sure which.

The problem is, the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) return from them isn't strictly formatted, there's errors in it. Also it's returning a lot of information that you don't actually need. But by being returned the structure of the data is forced into a not very useful format.

The long and short of this, I think I need to write a new set of APIs if we want to use the Guide outside of DNA.


API Nightmares

Post 2

Asteroid Lil - Offstage Presence

Which parts of h2g2 are written in COBOL?


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