Mashape's Voice

Follow the FIFA World Cup 2014 via the World Cup API!

Fri, 13 Jun 2014 19:04:00 -0400

Fan of the FIFA World Cup 2014? Thinking of building a quick mashup with data from the World Cup in Brazil? Or, like Gerald Bauer, you’re looking for open data sets for the World Cup in Brazil? We have the solution for you!

The Mashape API marketplace now has 3 World Cup related APIs listed on our platform!

The Copa do Mundo 2014 – World Cup Brazil API returns groups, games, and overall rankings of the countries playing in the game. It also happens to be in Portuguese, so you might need to translate it to your main language.
The FIFA World Cup API created by our own Growth Hacker, Montana Flynn, returns matches, rounds and team data in JSON.
The unOfficial World Cup 2014 API originally created by Kimonolabs provides up-to-date data on player, team, match, as well as historical player performance across their respective club teams.

As a member of Mashape’s community, you can consume their API for free!

Alternatively, if you have built your own soccer or sports related API, definitely list it on Mashape, and let us know by leaving a comment here to have it featured! We are really excited to see the kind of mashups you’re creating with our APIs.

Do leave a comment here, on our Facebook or Google Plus page, or tweet us @mashape to show us your apps!

PS. Here at Mashape, we’re represented by US, France, and Italy. Which team are you supporting for the World Cup? :)

Manage your contracts with Contract Live API on Mashape

Tue, 03 Jun 2014 17:52:53 -0400

Nobody likes to track down the latest version of a contract, hassle with track changes and negotiations, or sign duplicate paper copies. Contract Live is the first contract-management platform for companies to manage all steps from initiation to contract execution on the cloud.

With Contract Live your team receives email and text message alerts for deadlines, summary sheets, and an online library with all your contracts. The platform combines a simple, secured web mail interface with advanced features that help manage all your contracts, such as suppliers, clients, HR, and partnerships. Most importantly, Contract Live assists throughout all stages of documentation, like creation, negotiation, signing, and management in one safe place.

The Contract Live API enables you to create a contract from scratch or import a template of your own, add attachments, and incorporate negotiations directly onto a contract. You can import a Word document or PDF to create your contract templates. The receiving party will be invited to view the contract, which is hosted on Contract Live’s platform; additionally, all negotiations and binding signatures are all handled within their product.

With the automated templates, you can create hundreds of personalized contracts and share them with your colleagues or third parties. Additionally, you can manage an unlimited number of contracts, signatures and attachments.

As a member of Mashape’s community you can try their API for free. With over 3,000 customers using their product, Contract Live is quickly becoming the cloud contract management solution. Companies of all sizes, from boutiques to organizations within the banking and insurance industries, can benefit from Contract Live.

Mashape is pleased to have Contract Live join our community. For all your contract needs, incorporate their API into your application today!

Here’s an example Curl code snippet, Post Create Negotiation Attachment:

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/b00bca69b8a6f917c03f

HackerRank challenges your coding skills through Mashape

Wed, 28 May 2014 16:09:54 -0400

HackerRank is a site for hackers to challenge themselves by solving programming problems in different CS domains like algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Presented in categories and challenges, developers learn to excel in different programming paradigms.

In addition to HackerRank’s individual challenges, companies can now use the platform to test prospective employees. Technical phone interviews don’t provide a clear picture of the candidate’s ability. By utilizing competitive programming contests across a broad spectrum of applications, prospective candidates participate in real time code evaluations.

There are three categories and challenges: Artificial Intelligence, Algorithmic Challenges, and Code Golf. Challenges include writing an AI bot to play against another AI bot, write code to solve a test case, and solve a problem with as few characters as possible. HackerRank’s code checker API, found here, enables a dev to submit a source code, which is compiled and run against a list of provided test cases

HackerRank is building a community of hackers who discuss problems, learn, compete and collaborate together; as well as a tool for companies to streamline their recruiting process. Give their API a try today!

Here’s a sample code snippet:

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/03312148f672029cdd8f

Xplenty makes data processing easy through Mashape

Tue, 13 May 2014 14:18:29 -0400

Gaining access and interpreting your data can be a challenge. With Xplenty companies of all sizes have the ability to access their Big Data in a simple to use cloud service. Xplenty’s solution is a code-free Hadoop as a Service platform that allows you to easily create data workflows, provision, monitor and scale clusters. Mashape is proud to partner with Xplenty and offer their API to our community.

Xplenty’s data integration harnesses the power of Hadoop to create an easy to use, scalable ETL service that enables you to prepare structured and semi-structured data for analytics. You can join data from one or more sources, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB, to transform your structured data stored on AWS, Rackspace, Google Cloud, or IBM SoftLayer. Plus, you can quickly design data flows with a rich set of powerful transformation functions.

The Xplenty API, found here, provides control and monitoring functionality of clusters and jobs. After defining a data processing package, using the Xplenty web application, you can call the API to create Hadoop clusters, run jobs, monitor their progress, or terminate jobs and clusters.

Ultimately, Xplenty features a set of tools that any data professional can use without special training. It is a complete, cost-effective solution for putting your data into play, from deployment through import, processing, analysis and monitoring.

Here’s a sample code snippet:

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/400df74b3bfa48ea6e19

Three Ways API-First Development is the Future of Web Development

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 14:39:30 -0400

Over the past decade their have been a number of different web development paradigms. As the craft of web development has evolved so have the ways of designing and structuring software architecture. API First design is an approach to software development that emphasizes building components of your application as APIs.

This approach has a number of advantages:

Separation of Concerns

API First design is the formal separation of the front end from the back end. For instance Mashape.com is separated into two two github repos, one for the front end and one for the back end, which interact through a well defined API. Similar to the Model View Controller paradigm, by decoupling data from logic from presentation, it forces a better code architecture, which in the long term decreases your technical debt. API-First design makes it easy to push data to multiple views, regardless of size or functionality.

Specialization

Industries move forward when knowledge can be ‘black boxed’. Imagine if, to build a web application, you had to know how to build the microchips from scratch. But thanks to specialization and division of labor all you need to focus on is the code. This is the advantage of API First design. Developers only need to know the requests and responses sequences of the API endpoints. This approach frees up the front end dev team to focus on a few specific ways to interact with the data, and the back end team can focus on providing it in a RESTful manner.

Modularity

Why limit yourself to just one source of data? With modern web practices you can easily combine multiple APIs to make a powerful site fast. And if your needs change, so can the app, by simply adding or removing an API. Plus the modular approach decreases the difficulty of scaling up your application.

API First design is a step forward in building high performance websites. And if you need inspiration for websites to build, check out our extensive catalog of APIs at Mashape.

Wavecell SMS Calls through Mashape

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 14:53:00 -0400

Wavecell provides mobile messaging services for enterprises, application developers, mobile carriers and aggregators. Through their platform Mashape users can send SMS worldwide using a simple, fast, and reliable HTTP API.

The Wavecell API, found here, is designed for sending SMS–MT messages, as well as receiving SMS-MO and delivery reports. You can deliver and monitor push notifications to mobile apps, and utilize direct local connectivity and international routing. Additionally, you can customize your dynamic Sender IDs, build person-to-person and chat messaging services, and interact or collect data from mobile subscribers.

The Wavecell platform is a state-of-the-art carrier grade cloud infrastructure; which enables telecoms, service providers, advertisers, and brands to optimize their messaging in a cost efficient manner. Their service is scalable and reliable, plus, you’ll get robust analytics, reporting and dedicated support.

As a full featured messaging service you’ll have access to over 700 global carriers and more than 200 countries. We’re excited to have Wavecell join our community – Give them a try today!

Here’s a sample code snippet:

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/11152540

API Glossary

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 17:00:47 -0400

When it comes to APIs, there’s a lot of jargon out there. The meaning of certain terms isn’t always obvious, and API providers sometimes use different ones to refer to the same thing.

That’s why we created an API glossary. It contains the terminology we use on our site and in our documentation, as well as related words and common acronyms.

- If you’re just starting out with APIs you can get the foundational knowledge you need to dive right into API use, design, and development.

- If you need to explain APIs to a non-technical, instead of mumbling something from the RFC, you can find useful and authoritative definitions all in one place.

- If you’re looking to make your own API this can help structure your thinking and design patterns, as well as improve your documentation.

It’s hosted on Github so anyone can contribute through a pull request or by submitting an issue.

And once you’re done learning about APIs at the glossary, get some hands on experience at Mashape. Sign up for a free account today.

ZenPayroll, a delightful payroll service, joins Mashape

Mon, 14 Apr 2014 17:56:54 -0400

As a small business owner or member of its development team, using traditional big enterprise payroll solutions is expensive and time consuming. Mashape is proud to have ZenPayroll join our community. By moving payroll into the cloud, ZenPayroll offers online payroll that’s easy to use and automates all tax calculations, payments, and filings.

ZenPayroll’s API, found here, allows third-party applications to send data, including hours worked, tips, bonuses, commissions, and reimbursements directly to the payroll app. The API transforms payroll from being a vertical silo to a horizontal platform that seamlessly connects HR, time tracking, accounting and other back office functions. With a full-service payroll solution, your team will never have to manually import financial records again.

As an SMB you can break free from paying enterprise-scale software prices and get payroll tax calculations, payments, and direct deposit transactions with a simple to use API. If you want to set up and run payroll in minutes, from any web-enabled device, you have to try ZenPayroll. It’s currently available in eight U.S. states (CA, CO, FL, IL, MA, NY, TX, and WA) and the company plans to roll out support to more states on a regular basis.

Here’s a sample code snippet:

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/10685407

Mashape was at the biggest #hackathon ever! LAHacks was...

Mon, 14 Apr 2014 15:47:00 -0400

Mashape was at the biggest #hackathon ever! LAHacks was phenomenal, and we made sure to document the fun.

Also our very own Montana Flynn gave a presentation on Making APIs that Developers Love. Check out the slides!

Five Bitcoin APIs for the Revolution

Fri, 11 Apr 2014 14:21:43 -0400

Looking to smash fiat currency? Or just want to include the cool new distributed payment system in your next app? We can help. Check out these five APIs that tap into the power of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Average

Get a weighted average from Bitcoin exchanges around the world. Includes different currencies and exchange volume.

Trusted Coin

M-of-N transactions are an important step in adding greater security to the Bitcoin ecosystem. By splitting private keys among multiple parties it makes theft much more difficult, as well as empowering developers to add alerts and create flexible security.

Coinbase

With more than 1,000,000 consumer wallets Coinbase is one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges, and you can use that power in your services through this API.

Bips

Send Bitcoin payments securely through bips, one of the largest Bitcoin Payment Service Providers, as well as checking balances and creating invoices for your wallets.

Gitcoin

Show your favorite open source developers and projects some love by contributing Bitcoin with the Gitcoin API.

Bonus: Dogechain

If you like your crypto-currencies with more meme references we’ve got you covered - the API for Dogechain can give you info on addresses, recent transactions, network difficulty, and more.

We’ve got more API’s than just these, so sign up today to start powering your application with Mashape and BTC!

OpenSSL Update

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 15:18:00 -0400

On Monday April 7th OpenSSL released an update to address CVE-2014-0160 (aka Heartbleed). This was a vulnerability in the popular cryptographic library that is used to secure many major websites. It affected nearly two thirds of web servers, including sites like Google, Twitter, and Yahoo. Mashape has implemented the update and is no longer vulnerable to potential Heartbleed exploits. We’ve also reissued our SSL certificates, changed internal passwords, and changed private keys.

While we have no evidence that there has been any type of attack or intrusion, we have automatically logged out all users, and for extra security users should:

Create new passwords: You can create a new password at https://www.mashape.com/settings/account.

Generate a new API key: You can manage your production keys at https://www.mashape.com/keys.

We, along with the rest of the web development community, will continue to monitor the situation and make sure that all the necessary fixes have been enacted. If you have any questions about the OpenSSL situation and how it affects Mashape please contact us.

VerticalResponse Joins Mashape

Mon, 07 Apr 2014 14:59:00 -0400

In our fast paced world smart marketers need a tool to quickly create and send professional looking emails. Mashape is proud to have Vertical Response, a leading email campaign suite, join our community.

VerticalResponse helps you create and send great email campaigns. It makes contact and list management easy, allowing you to create contacts, group them into meaningful lists, and use these lists to send targeted email campaigns. The VerticalResponse API lets you interact with the platform the same way the application does. For example: Create an application to keep the contacts in your CRM in sync with VerticalResponse; create an application to send and track custom emails; connect a custom sign-up form in your website to VerticalResponse to store newly added contacts. The possibilities are truly endless.

Utilizing the principles of HTTP, VerticalResponse has built its new REST API from the ground up. With its Hypermedia or HATEOAS API, all resources are self-describing thus making the model simple and consistent. As a developer you do not have to keep track of the different resources or store the URLs for different operations. You can navigate through the API from any endpoint, just like you would a website.

VerticalResponse is very excited about the possibilities the new API opens up for customers and third party developers. Let VerticalResponse help you create and send optimized email campaigns. Give their API a try today!

Here’s an example code snippet:

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/10029780

Next Caller, Advanced Caller ID, joins Mashape

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 17:07:08 -0400

Like everyone, we hate calling customer support centers. After making your way through a labyrinth of support options, wouldn’t it be great if the service agent already knew your name and address? If you manage a service center or develop tools for caller ID systems, our newest partner can make this a reality. Mashape is proud to partner with Next Caller, an Advanced Caller ID^SM for businesses.

With over 220 million records on file, Next Caller is your company’s secondary database. By linking U.S. phone numbers, both mobile and landline, to names, addresses, and emails, Next Caller will save your support center an incredible amount of time gathering user information. Caller profiles are sent directly to your answering agents. Best of all, Next Caller is integrated with leading customer service platforms, including Zendesk, Salesforce, Cisco and Avaya, among many others.

Next Caller’s API is based on REST principles and utilizes OAuth 1.0a. The API, found here, can only be used to identify inbound callers. When you don’t know who’s calling, simply ping Next Caller’s database.

Time is money and customer satisfaction is valued in seconds. Give Next Caller a try today. Your customers will be glad you did.

Here’s an example code snippet from Next Caller’s API.

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/9902103

Vizago 3D Face Recognition API joins Mashape

Mon, 24 Mar 2014 14:22:03 -0400

There are numerous use cases for manipulating 3D images; however, finding a quality application has always been a challenge, until now. Mashape is proud to partner with Vizago, a leading face recognition technology company. Using a single 2D facial photo, Vizago creates full 3D facial reconstructions in OBJ format.

Vizago’s patented Morphable Model Technology enables you to model and manipulate faces in real 3D, as well as create realistic 3D reconstructions of faces from a single user photo. With the Vizago API, located here, you can create 3D representations when developing computer game characters, avatars, and medical simulations. Vizago is also great for virtual shopping applications.

We encourage you to try Vizago, available with a freemium package. With easy integration, you simply upload a photo and Vizago generates an incredible 3D mesh and texture for your application. Acceptable images include JPEGs, PNGs, and GIFs. Image size is restricted to 2MB; additionally, it’s recommended you incorporate feature points, landmarks and coordinates, as well as gender information. The entire rendering process typically takes one minute.

Give Vizago a try today; we know you’re going to love the results!

Here’s a sample code snippet:

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/9746006

Nutritionix, the largest food database, joins Mashape

Mon, 17 Mar 2014 14:57:25 -0400

It’s not often we get to announce an API partnership that can directly improve your health and wellbeing. Mashape is excited to have Nutritionix, the largest branded food database in the world, join our community.

Nutritionix is a search engine and database for nutrition information. With over 300,000 unique food items you can browse or search by restaurants, as well as query specific food types to find nutritional information.

The Nutritionix API, found here, allows you to access and integrate the functionality and data of Nutritionix to create new applications. The API provides nutritional facts to over 230,000 UPCs/barcodes, 100,000 restaurant menu items, and 10,000 common foods from the USDA.

We’re excited to have Nutritionix part of our community. So what are you waiting for? Go out there and make the next incredible health and fitness app.

Here’s an example code snippet from Nutritionix’s API:

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/9605787

Mashape Rev Share Fees Down 5%. Effective now!

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 13:49:16 -0400

Hello Mashape community,

We’re happy to announce a reduced revenue share percentage rate. Going forward monetized APIs will only be charged a 20% rev share. With ❤.

As always, Mashape will continue to provide free support, quick distribution, analytics, auto generated code snippets, issues and reporting system, status, alerts, testing tools, collaboration and permission add-ons, and many more features.

Looking forward to our continued relationship to build together the API economy.

cheers,

mashapers.

AYLIEN Text Analysis Joins Mashape

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 13:21:00 -0400

We know that working with text can be difficult at the best of times. Ultimately, giving your readers what they want in the cleanest format ensures repeat consumers. When we discovered AYLIEN, an incredibly intuitive Natural Language Processing (NLP) solution, we knew their API would be a welcome addition to our community.

Based on NLP and machine learning algorithms, AYLIEN is focused on creating simple yet intelligent applications in the news and media space. Their API allows you to quickly extract basic data like headlines and the body of text from a document; additionally, it offers a summarization service, entity and conception extraction, and language and sentiment detection.

The AYLIEN Text Analysis API, found here, consists of eight distinct Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, and Machine Learning APIs. When used in conjunction, you can easily extract meaning and insight from any document.

Text analysis APIs pour through text, eliminate the extraneous, and deliver powerful content. We think AYLIEN is one of the best in the business. Wouldn’t it be nice to bring order to your chaos? Give the AYLIEN API a try today.

Here’s a sample code snippet:

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/9469568

Voice and SMS API Company, Plivo, Joins Mashape

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 16:57:40 -0500

The telephony business is notoriously complex. With legacy carriers and networks, developers are challenged to maintain old customer support systems; let alone face the task of developing new features and applications.

Mashape is pleased to have Plivo, a cloud communications company, join our community. With Plivo’s solution you get a simple infrastructure service, which handles everything from carrier contracts to call quality and messaging deliverability to technical support.

Plivo enables developers and businesses to build powerful Voice and SMS apps without carrier lock-in. The Plivo API, found here, enables you to make and receive calls, send SMS, make a conference call, as well as control the flow of a call or a message. Imagine building full-scale conference apps with unique call flows or adding SMS two-factor authentication to your mobile app; best of all, you can use any web language and there’s no upfront costs.

Also, Plivo allows native Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) support so it’s easy to connect your existing telecom infrastructure and carrier contracts to the cloud. Additionally the API is platform independent and can be used in any programming environment such as Curl, Java, Node, PHP, Python, Objective C, and Ruby.

Plivo has helped businesses of various sizes build applications for customer call centers, web conferences, SMS notifications and more. With their API you can easily build a customized solution that meets the exacting needs of your business.

Try Plivo’s API today!

Here’s an example code snippet:

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/9335442

Document and Data Merge Solution, WebMerge, Joins Mashape

Mon, 24 Feb 2014 17:15:00 -0500

So you’ve just finished writing your document, but you need to add supporting data. Use WebMerge. The newest API to join Mashape is an amazing tool that lets you easily combine documentation and data sets, and share the customized document internally or with 3^rd party users.

WebMerge will become an invaluable tool for your team to manage and create new documents, and perform merges. Also, with customizable account settings, users can restrict permission to selected documents.

The WebMerge REST API, found here, allows 3^rd party applications to pull and integrate document and data routing information into their system; then send data to each document via webhooks using a unique URL.

Once implemented you simply setup a template using a fillable PDF, Microsoft Word document, or use WebMerge’s online editor. Next, generate a customized document with data from a trusted 3^rd party or upload your own content. Each customized document can be shared via email or sent to a cloud storage service; additionally, you can use a webhook to send the document to another API or applicable service.

Also, the WebMerge API allows you to use one feed and push data to different documents based on predefined values. As an example one form can be used for multiple solutions, such as lead generation, where different user answers prompt specific PDF formatted responses. Ultimately, you can map a user’s document fields to the data in your application, and then automatically merge the document for them.

Mashape is thrilled to have WebMerge join our community, and we think you’ll appreciate their solution as well.

Here’s an example code snipppet.

https://gist.github.com/daviesf1/9196597

ZUMATA Travel API Joins Mashape

Thu, 20 Feb 2014 13:38:35 -0500

Are you building the next incredible travel platform, or perhaps need to enhance your current travel backend tools? Mashape is pleased to offer ZUMATA’s real-time pricing, availability, and worldwide booking capabilities.

ZUMATA is a B2B SaaS company focused primarily on meta-search, loyalty companies, and online travel agents to improve their operations. Featuring over 300,000 global hotel properties, with an emphasis on directly sourced agreements in Asia, ZUMATA’s API will maximize your profits per sale.

The global travel API offers huge content and easy integration. By consuming their API through Mashape you’ll have access to Search Hotels (returns hotel rates at a searched location ID, or an individual hotel), Cancelation Policy (retrieves the cancellation policy for a specific room), Payment (verifies credit information prior to a booking call), and Booking (search to book a hotel room.)

Try ZUMATA, the newest travel API to join our community.

Here’s an example code snippet:

http://gist.github.com/daviesf1/9120091