{"id":587,"date":"2015-02-16T12:03:17","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T12:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/copyright.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/?p=587"},"modified":"2015-03-12T12:58:25","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T12:58:25","slug":"weve-got-an-api","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/blog\/apis\/weve-got-an-api","title":{"rendered":"We&#8217;ve got an API&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>APIs (application programming interface) are almost a way of life for us in MALS. They are an essential tool that allows us to exploit systems (I don&#8217;t mean in the sense of unfair or underhand access, but rather to derive maximum benefit from a system). However, time and time again we hit the problem of suppliers who proudly state they have APIs for their systems but when we ask to access them we find:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the APIs are unavailable to customers &#8211; but the supplier would be happy to do whatever development we were intending if we can provide them with a big bag of cash ($$$)<\/li>\n<li>the APIs are undocumented &#8211; in other words no use at all<\/li>\n<li>the APIs were documented &#8211; yeah! &#8211; about five years ago and despite the code being upgraded no one thought to do the same with the documentation &#8211; no!<\/li>\n<li>the supplier is happy to provide access to the APIs for an additional charge<\/li>\n<li>you need to attend a training course (and possibly be certified &#8211; I&#8217;ll let you decide on the definition) before you can access the APIs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&lt;rant&gt;<br \/>\nI can sympathise with suppliers not wanting people messing with their systems. However, if you say you provide APIs to access them then for goodness sake do so!<br \/>\n&lt;\/rant&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>APIs (application programming interface) are almost a way of life for us in MALS. They are an essential tool that allows us to exploit systems (I don&#8217;t mean in the sense of unfair or underhand access, but rather to derive &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/blog\/apis\/weve-got-an-api\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[11,47],"class_list":["post-587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apis","tag-api","tag-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":597,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions\/597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/middleware\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}