Ask HN: What's Your Favorite API Developer Portal?

#1

Post by rahim » Fri, Jul 13, 2012, 5:08 PM UTC

We're gearing up to redesign our massively outdated Developer Portal and I'd love some examples of API dev portals done right. Folks like Twilio and Tokbox are on the list, who else? Please also say what you like about it and what (if anything) you wish they'd improve.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Favorite API Developer Portal?

#2

Post by dtsingletary » Fri, Jul 13, 2012, 5:16 PM UTC

Parse's portal gets a great melding of form, function, and philosophy. http://www.parse.com

FullContact's portal has some nifty navigation on the documentation: http://www.fullcontact.com/developer/docs/

An honorable mention should goto the creativity behind Twitter's Field Guide: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/platform-objects

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Favorite API Developer Portal?

#3

Post by andrewmwatson » Fri, Jul 13, 2012, 5:18 PM UTC

Pusher has a great realtime console, Stripe has stellar documentation and Foursquare has great developer features like testing recent push notifications.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Favorite API Developer Portal?

#4

Post by frankdenbow » Fri, Jul 13, 2012, 5:20 PM UTC

Stripe does a great job with their portal. Mashery as well has a great interactive portal that I like to use.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Favorite API Developer Portal?

#5

Post by tjlytle » Fri, Jul 13, 2012, 5:21 PM UTC

CloudMine (https://cloudmine.me) recently updated their dashboard, and while I haven't had a chance to really work through it all, it looks pretty nice.s

Since it's backend as a service, allowing access to view/edit/troubleshoot the data is key.

Also, CloudMailin's (http://www.cloudmailin.com/) 'Try it Live!' is a pretty nice demo of the API.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Favorite API Developer Portal?

#6

Post by mschonfeld » Fri, Jul 13, 2012, 5:39 PM UTC

I actually just rolled out a new Dev portal at Dwolla. He I it out over at developers.dwolla.com. I tried to make it more of an integration portal, so that there's something for coders, but also for non tech people trying to figure out if Dwolla is right for them.

Mainly tho, I think that the 4sq model of being able to try out every method on the fly is super important to devs...

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Favorite API Developer Portal?

#7

Post by jgeewax » Fri, Jul 13, 2012, 5:42 PM UTC

Stripe is pretty spectacular.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Favorite API Developer Portal?

#8

Post by adrianparsons » Fri, Jul 13, 2012, 5:56 PM UTC

Twilio's getting started documentation blew me away. A focus on what you can build, and what you can get working quickly ("I just sent myself a TEXT. Sweet!"). It's also better designed than most consumer web apps.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Favorite API Developer Portal?

#9

Post by martinnormark » Fri, Jul 13, 2012, 6:00 PM UTC

Campaign Monitor is pretty awesome: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/api/

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Favorite API Developer Portal?

#10

Post by caseysoftware » Fri, Jul 13, 2012, 6:20 PM UTC

dtsingletary wrote: post #2

Parse's portal gets a great melding of form, function, and philosophy. http://www.parse.com FullContact's portal has some nifty navigation on the documentation: http://www.fullcontact.com/developer/docs/ An honorable mention should goto the creativity behind Twitter's Field Guide: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/platform-objects

Absolutely agreed on Parse. My only criticism is bookmarking doesn't work very well.

Mashery also puts together some solid docs via their iodocs system - https://github.com/mashery/iodocs/