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Marvel Comics API

developer.marvel.com

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Re: Marvel Comics API

#21

Post by Natsu »

_zen wrote: post #17
turtle4 wrote: post #14

While having access at all is nice, the terms of use are prohibitive and somewhat heavy handed. They basically say you can make something, but can't charge for it in any way, you can't create a mash-up (no augmentation of data) and if it works out, Marvel will probably implement it for themselves anyway. Not really as 'open' as you might hope. The following default rules apply to all Apps: Advertising. No advertising…

They never said it was open, so I don't see the problem, unless you readily associate "API" with "open".

I would not have anticipated all of those and I appreciated the heads up. If you're offering an API to the public at large like this, yes, I would default towards assuming it was relatively open barring notice to the contrary. When you make it really easy to start sending requests and bury all the terms in conditions in fine print, that's something of an anti-pattern.

Especially when talking about the kind of API most likely to be used by clever teenagers on a fansite.

Re: Marvel Comics API

#22

Post by minimaxir »

A cool thing about the API is that it returns both normalized and denormalized foreign entities. (E.g if I query a character, it will return a reference to an endpoint to query all that character's comics AND it will return the total number of comics). It saves a lot of time for aggregation.

I used that data a few months ago to create a chart of the most popular Marvel characters: http://i.imgur.com/KVAT3Xn.png

Code for retrieving the data here: https://github.com/minimaxir/all-marvel-comics-characters (I have absolutely no idea if this still works)

Re: Marvel Comics API

#23

Post by sbarre »

turtle4 wrote: post #14

While having access at all is nice, the terms of use are prohibitive and somewhat heavy handed. They basically say you can make something, but can't charge for it in any way, you can't create a mash-up (no augmentation of data) and if it works out, Marvel will probably implement it for themselves anyway. Not really as 'open' as you might hope. The following default rules apply to all Apps: Advertising. No advertising…

When this conversation came up on Reddit a while back, someone made the same point as you, and I replied (more or less) this back then too:

These terms apply to the free usage of their API.

I have no doubt that if you had a good idea that monetized their API data well, and you wanted to do things not allowed by this default license agreement, you could reach out to them and get a different license that allowed you to charge money and/or do more, probably in exchange for a revenue sharing or something.

Since this is a new(ish) service, they are probably not actively promoting a paid option while they hammer out any bugs or issues in v1 (since the SLA for paying customers is likely more involved).

Obviously this is all speculation, but just because this is the license displayed on the site doesn't mean it's the only license they are prepared to offer.

Re: Marvel Comics API

#24

Post by relaxatorium »

r00fus wrote: post #11
pincubator wrote: post #2

what kind of information you can pull? is it possible to pull content of the comics?

Looks like just metadata - characters, series, events - I was just a tad disappointed that event didn't have a "event date" which constituted a date that the event occurred in. Such a date would allow construction of a marvel-verse wide timeline.

Does it have "issue release date"? That's what you'd need to make a timeline that made any sense at all. An in-universe "event date" doesn't really make sense because of the whole sliding timescale thing where continuity makes no sense and we (comic fans) pretend it does.

Re: Marvel Comics API

#25

Post by kitwalker12 »

would be great if a proper search parameter was provided. Right now you can only search characters by the exact name or 'namestartswith'. It would be nice if the searches had a priority associated with them (Iron man shows up way in the bottom for a search for 'iron')

Re: Marvel Comics API

#30

Post by chaostheory »

sbarre wrote: post #23
turtle4 wrote: post #14

While having access at all is nice, the terms of use are prohibitive and somewhat heavy handed. They basically say you can make something, but can't charge for it in any way, you can't create a mash-up (no augmentation of data) and if it works out, Marvel will probably implement it for themselves anyway. Not really as 'open' as you might hope. The following default rules apply to all Apps: Advertising. No advertising…

When this conversation came up on Reddit a while back, someone made the same point as you, and I replied (more or less) this back then too: These terms apply to the free usage of their API. I have no doubt that if you had a good idea that monetized their API data well, and you wanted to do things not allowed by this default license agreement, you could reach out to them and get a different license that allowed you to…

Unless they have a public price, I'd be wary. When you have to ask for cost, it's usually about 5-6 figures for year of access.

Still, it's a start.

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