Thursday, December 13, 2012

Rest up with the REST JSON/JSONP "Open Beer Database" API

Visual Studio Magazine - Beer? There's an API for that!

I've been fooling around with REST services, getting JSON data back from free online sources and displaying it in Web or Windows Store apps via a ListView or FlipView, and so on.

After experimenting with the Windows Azure Mobile Services, which simplifies the back-end data-access process and lets you easily set up your own services, I was trying out other APIs and just had to pass on my latest discovery: beer.

Yup, there's an Open Beer Database, described as "a free, public database and API for beer information." Now, that's my kind of information ...

Anyway, note that the Open Beer API "is currently a work-in-progress and is subject to change without notice." It returns data in JSON or JSONP (to work around cross-domain calls). It provides the usual CRUD operations via HTTP verbs GET, POST, PUT and DELETE and lets you retrieve breweries or beers, both as aggregates or singly by ID number.

..."

Open Beer Database

The API is currently a work-in-progress and is subject to change without notice.

Overview

Caching

Currently no requests are cached.

Rate Limit

The API is not currently rate limited. Please use good judgment when designing your application.

Responses

Currently the only supported formats are JSON (application/json) and JSONP (text/javascript).

Public Token

A public token has read-only access.

Private Token

A private token has read and write access.

image

Open Beer Database - Displaying Breweries via JSONP

image

Beer! REST API! Beer!

No comments: