Top 12 Most Useful APIs for Web Developers



Third party data make up a great deal of website content. Maps, currency conversions, 140-character tweets and more are tied to APIs.

Most web developers will stick to the most widely popular and used APIs to enhance a website. There are, however, a few hidden treasures to be aware of. These can feed any website or custom mobile application development with great data. Check out these 10 APIs and see how you can make use of them in your web development plans.

REST Countries

This will get you a list of countries and their country codes, capitals, currency, language and so much more.

OpenWeatherMap

Choose the free API version all the way up to an Enterprise solution. Get the weather forecast including wind, barometer, precipitation, cloud cover and more for a day or an entire week. This API gets its data from 40,000 weather stations.

Trendsmap

This API makes use of Twitter hashtags, giving you a live map of all trending tweets. You can also get historical data, higher zoom levels and an analysis for a fee.

Facebook APIs

These APIs work with Ads, Chat, and Credits. Some are no longer supported, but there is also the backbone of the Facebook platform, which is the Graph API. You can enable your app to read or write data to Facebook.

Twilio

This API is from the PaaS company and it enables you to program the service APIs to make and receive phone calls and text messages.

SoapUI

This is a free open source platform that is among the best API web testing tools you can get. Besides being open and free, it also allows you to perform automated tests, functional tests, and load tests.

Additional features of this API tool include being able to change the setup to suit the target environment. You can also create web method results by assertions using this API tool.

Runscope

This is one API tool that offers users a web-based tool to test APIs. You want a tool like this to make sure that your APIs are running correctly and returning valid data. You also want to be sure it debugs itself correctly and Runscope can help. It renders you with testing, monitoring, and traffic debugging functions. There is no provision for any of the traffic alerts.

Postman

This is a major Google Chrome plug-in. It is among the best tools for API web development. It is quite a powerful tool for testing web services.

Frisby.js

This is also a web API testing tool that the user can implement to do various tests on API. You do not have to worry about dealing with web interfaces. This is nothing more than a library and this library relies completely on jasmine and node.js.  Users can write Java codes freely and organize surrounding environments. Use it to perform tests and afterward, use it to prepare a setup.

Slack

Working with a website development company means there will likely be lots of back and forth between clients and developers. You might find your clients’ websites are in need of a communication platform that brings together real-time messaging and message archiving. Meet the Slack API: communication is in one place, and people can create teams to actively communicate with one another.

Clearbit
APIs are designed to meet an intended website or client’s business needs. That’s exactly what Clearbit does. This API offers analysis, fraud prevention, geolocation and background checks.

There are many APIs available to improve user experience and custom web development depending on what functions a website needs. All it takes is a little bit of research to identify the best APIs that will satisfy all requirements.

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