Years ago I put together a Rails app to store iPhone/iPad apps for curation. There was a backend that connected to the iTunes API and then I parsed the data elements I needed and entered them into the DB. The most infuriating thing was realizing that I needed to update the model with a new data element, or that some API responses didn't include the needed data. There was all this controller and model code and then th…
Yes, storing the entire API response in a single column is an option, and yes I think you stumbled on some of what drew some people to "noSQL", which has it's own downsides, and the pendulum swings to people talking about how terrible "noSQL" is, but it can work.