In search of terrible API’s
What are some awful APIs you’ve encountered? Unreliable, poor auth, terrible query languages?
I’m building an service to manage junky third party APIs. Logging, alerting, retry, transforming etc.
Would love some inspiration!
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Pivotaltrackers CSV format. If a field contains quotes and/or linefeeds. Then CSV file contains that as well.
SOAP API - with opening hours from 4-6 in the morning. Test system? No, but they provided you with a source code for a mock-up of the API. And it was worthless. So you had to get up early to debug
I think the worst one I have ever come across is Sage SData http://sage.github.io/SData-2.0/ , weird XML request formats and inconsistent responses. Despite this awful api I have built integrations for companies doing high 5 figures per month using it (and charged £10,000s for developing those integrations) so there is definitely a business case for improving it. It's been a few years so they might have an alternative by now.
JIRA. Probably not the worst one in the world, but an adequate benchmark.
Maybe Oracle if you want something besides HTTP / REST.
ProgrammableWeb might be a good resource?