Dhruv
Posted on
Do you think dev.to should have an API to so that you can list your posts/activity on your websites etc. ?
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Top comments (11)
No. I don't think it would be a good idea. Maybe a widget that displays your posts but not an open API.
Personally believe it would take away from the site. With a single site, we all come together as a community. Especially once the platform become open source it would be better to have everyone working to better the platform for each other instead of trying to better their third-party client. Think back to how scattered Twitter was in the early days; the features depended so much on what client you were using.
I think we should Just have a widget to show you're aggregated followed + favorites + posts feed so people can see what your interested in with only links to the content on 'dev.to' & tags and reactions.
so people can see your presence on dev.to but still have to go to dev.to to actually see anything.
That has been a lot of the motivation for not going this route.
What we do want to improve on is opening up a few dedicated libraries everyone can use and share. Maybe that would technically involve exposing an open API. Honestly it's already technically possible in various ways, we just don't officially support any of it.
We do need to improve the ecosystem, but we have observed the issues you've described and we can benefit from not thinking of these things as totally obvious as we grow.
I'll add that I also agree with the various YES's in this thread. This is all being taken into consideration 😁
😁
I'm not sure I see a lot of value add for an api. Maybe a vanity api so I can flex my sweet stats, but idk. I use dev.to mostly as a place to read cool articles and share stuff from my professional blog, neither of which really require an api.
An article uploader api would allow me to auto publish to dev.to at the same time as my regular blog, but not a huge deal for me
That's what RSS feeds are for :).
Yes and YES
A big YES !!!!!!!
A widget, not API. IMO.
IMHO, API is no-brainer for devs' community :)