Interesting APIs

Guides and Useful Links
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While looking for open data APIs for something else, I stumbled upon a few interesting examples that I though could be worth sharing in case anyone has any projects they could be useful in.

For anyone asking "What’s an API?"
API’s are interfaces which let different software ant devices interact with each other.
It stands for Application Programming Interface.

A lot of the examples you’ll find online will be data APIs which can be used to fetch information to build things like interactive data plots, maps etc.

But they can be used to control things remotely, host content and operations for websites & apps (e.g. pulling in a product list, then creating an order and submitting payment).

I’ll kick things off with a few “Open Data” (that’s usually defined as public, free to access data) in the post below, but fee free to post links to APIs you find, with a bit of info on what they might be used for.

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A lot of these were found while browsing the current public/open data APIs available in the UK.

UK Police APIs

https://data.police.uk/docs/
Has incidents by location, stop and search info, list of neighbourhoods, incident resolution etc. I don’t know how long it takes for data to be added, but there is data for Frome from Dec 2021:

https://data.police.uk/api/crimes-street/all-crime?lat=51.2308&lng=-2.3201&date=2021-12
https://data.police.uk/api/avon-and-somerset/neighbourhoods

UK Admiralty/Hydrographic Office Data

Some interesting tings like sea bed mapping & tides. Appears to have plenty of free access but does mention 1 year’s free subscription- I haven’t looked at whether you have to pay after the first year.
https://admiraltyapi.portal.azure-api.net/docs/services/

DEFRA Flood Monitoring & Tide Gauges

https://environment.data.gov.uk/flood-monitoring/doc/reference
https://environment.data.gov.uk/flood-monitoring/doc/tidegauge

UK bathing Water Assessments

https://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/doc/api-reference-v0.6.html

British Geological Survey

https://sensors-docs.bgs.ac.uk/#overview

Animal Sensors

The site below lists sensor data related to tracking of animal movement and activity, linked to various studies.
https://www.movebank.org/movebank/#page=search_map
It’s powered by APIs which are free to access:

Plant Image Analysis

https://www.quantitative-plant.org/api

Those were just a few of APIs that I either didn’t know about or thought were interesting. If you’re ever in need of data about something, or wonder if you could interact with some thing outside of the standard website or App, it’s always worth a quick search for APIs which might be available.