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Ask HN: What API do you wish you had while building your product?

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Re: Ask HN: What API do you wish you had while building your product?

#21
post #3

Product information. Things like "The mainboard named XY from producer ABC has the manufacturer sku 1234567, the EAN-13 00123... and the UPC 01234...". Ideally add to that the custom specs, like "it has that many usb slots and this socket" etc. But I think I miss part of the picture here, there is probably a channel transmitting structured information like this from manufacturers to vendors, I just never found it.

My startup Semantics3 works on this problem - https://semantics3.com/

We have a standardized taxonomy and ontology to which we map all our products to. It's a garbage in garbage out problem but as long as the product has the information in some sort of semi-structured or unstructured form, we typically can infer attributes and standardize them based on their ontology (i.e. They have 4 USB ports)

Re: Ask HN: What API do you wish you had while building your product?

#26
post #6

I wanted machine learning-based app configuration. So I built it and spun it out as a separate product: https://improve.ai/

Awesome! I was looking for exactly a service like this (was almost going to build it myself) so will definitely try it out!

Re: Ask HN: What API do you wish you had while building your product?

#27
1. A process engine that can execute a process given as an EPC (ideally with an embeddable gui editor). The app notifies the API of event completions and the API allows you to query the current state of the process.

2. An embeddable survey tool like SurveyGizmo, but completely whitelabelable, including the survey editor

3. An API for benchmark scores for iOS and Android devices (give me all devices that are as fast or faster than a Samsung Galaxy S6)

4. An embeddable private commenting tool (like Disqus, but for the back-office parts of the website)

Re: Ask HN: What API do you wish you had while building your product?

#28
post #25

A reverse pastebin, where you give it a pastebin URL and it returns the plaintext.

Can't you use the /raw/ URL for that? E.g. https://pastebin.com/raw/AC3FGHBX

Works for pastebin.com, but not dpaste.com, sprunge.us, ix.io, fpaste.org, ideone.com, paste.fedoraproject.org, hastebin.com, termbin.com, paste.debian.net, gist.github.com, bpaste.net, lpaste.net, pastee.com, irccloud.com, codepad.org or susepaste.org.

I currently have ~40 lines of regex for this, plus some custom logic for a few that don't have raw URLs at all. A service would be very convenient.

Re: Ask HN: What API do you wish you had while building your product?

#29
An API for handling image processing/uploading to S3:

Use 1: Send a high-res image in any format (like, say, tiff), the original, a web-optimal jpg at full resolution, and any sizes that might be needed in various contexts (thumbnail, inline display at any screen density) are put into the right place in my S3 bucket.

Use 2: Using ids or original file names, point the API to an image or array of images, uploaded via Use 1, and give it a set of dimensions/conditions, and have it return links to the correct images for me.

Re: Ask HN: What API do you wish you had while building your product?

#30

Subscription billing API that deals with reminders, renewals, e-mails/cancellations, etc. Everything related to that. All existing solutions don't work well if revenue per user is a "measley" 2 USD per month.

So a "Low cost" billing API, everyone's dream!

"Low cost" could be 5% of charges. Use stripe under the hood, so you make 2.1%. Not too bad for a stripe wrapper.
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