I am researching documentation for api's. What makes a good documentation? What sections and articles are interesting for new and old users etc? Do you have any favorite documentation and why?
Thanks
Ask HN: What is the best example of api documentation you know?
1–10 of 12 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the best example of api documentation you know?
#2Take a look at beautiful docs[0]
Re: Ask HN: What is the best example of api documentation you know?
#3I like stripe-s documentation for their REST API
curl examples are the thing that impress me the most ...
Re: Ask HN: What is the best example of api documentation you know?
#4Examples examples examples. From the most common use cases to the less common. With annotations and links to the endpoint reference.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best example of api documentation you know?
#5Examples, examples, examples.
I also love the Google Maps API. They're certainly in my top 5 for API documentation.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best example of api documentation you know?
#6Twilio, Stripe, Parse, Sendgrid, Mailgun are examples of companies with good documentation.
Generally, I like to see a high-level overview of the API, authentication scheme, endpoints, sample request and response, error code explanations, and sample code coverage in multiple languages. I wrote a blog post on this topic:
Re: Ask HN: What is the best example of api documentation you know?
#7I don't have a favorite company with good documentation, but these two tools have been useful and seem well designed for creating docs:
- http://daux.io
- http://raneto.com
Re: Ask HN: What is the best example of api documentation you know?
#8Twilio, Stripe, Parse, Sendgrid, Mailgun are examples of companies with good documentation. Generally, I like to see a high-level overview of the API, authentication scheme, endpoints, sample request and response, error code explanations, and sample code coverage in multiple languages. I wrote a blog post on this topic: http://murtza.org/creating-a-great-developer-experience/
Much obliged for that. We still have a lot of work still here at Twilio to do around our documentation - appreciate the vote of confidence. Some of the stuff the DevX team is working on right now has me really excited.
Hope you'll share what you think when we release it.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best example of api documentation you know?
#9Twilio, Stripe, Parse, Sendgrid, Mailgun are examples of companies with good documentation. Generally, I like to see a high-level overview of the API, authentication scheme, endpoints, sample request and response, error code explanations, and sample code coverage in multiple languages. I wrote a blog post on this topic: http://murtza.org/creating-a-great-developer-experience/
I'd add BlockScore to that list:
Re: Ask HN: What is the best example of api documentation you know?
#10New York Times Article Search API:
http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/read/article_search_api_v2
everything a dev might ever want to know about constructing a query, calling this API, and parsing the results--beautifully accessible from this homepage