5
5 Comments

One simple API for No coders: Screenshots, PDFs, OpenGraph...

Hello IH!
In my pursuit of launching CuratorList.com, I started discovering many needs for my app that had no simple solution or needed a bunch of code to be implemented.

After a while, I decided that maybe people trying to create sites with no-code tools might be encountering these same issues, and not having a real solution.

I mean things like:

  • Grabbing a website Screenshot,
  • Retrieving the real URL behind a URL shortening service,
  • creating PDF's from HTML pages or text, or joining PDFs and HTMLs
  • Retrieving all the OpenGraph data from an URL,
    (and some more).

So, I came up with a side project to my side project.. Onesimpleapi

The idea behind it would be simple APIs, specifically tailored at no-coders with tutorials for the most common ones (like, how to use them in Airtables, Notion, etc)

Have you ever been in the need of a tool like this?
And most importantly, would you feel more confident about using it, if it had "a free but limited test plan" or "a 7 days trial"?

Thanks!

  1. 2

    This seems pretty exciting to me.

    Before:

    • register for n accounts
    • get n api keys
    • fetch n sdks / api endpoints
    • figure out n platform behaviors, limits, response signatures, etc
    • pay n places (maybe)

    After:

    • replace n with 1

    It does seem like there's some overlap with Zapier, but from what I gather, you wouldn't be connecting misc services through a GUI (at least initially). You'd be consolidating and simplifying them behind an "omni-API endpoint". Is that right?

    I wonder what the most strategic place to start would be. Do you know where the most friction/pain exists in the "nocode API integration" space?

  2. 2

    Seems pretty cool! I'd be curious how much of this Zapier could handle, if any.

    It'd probably be easier to niche down to something more narrow than "API's for no-coders". It's possible that each of those bullet points, with a little extra functionality, could be a product that you could launch with on its own.

    1. 2

      I agree it can be niche-down to something more specific, and I've seen some solutions that take that approach.

      My perspective is to make it simple to be used from within a no-code environment without struggle (most of the ones that are available are nice and with lots of features, but you need some coding experience).

      My secret plan is to keep adding more and more APIs (my ideal would be one new each month), so once you got a grasp of how to use it, it's a complete toolset at your hand.

      And then of course, you'd be able to chain this into Zapier for more complex workflows, that'd come at a later date.

  3. 2

    This is pretty genius. Great job Pablius!

    1. 1

      Thanks, just trying to make things easier

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 55 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 18 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments