Use a free web service for tutorial?

[invious]

Is this your way of donating to pinboard? 😉 or is there a way to make a free account or an API key listed somewhere?

I really want to use this so I might shell out the $11 💵

[deanishe]

I'm afraid Pinboard is paid only. As such, it was never a perfect choice for the tutorial. I used it because the API is simple enough that the tutorial can be about using Alfred-Workflow and not dealing with the API.

I really need to write another tutorial now that Alfred 3 is out, and I will definitely use a free service for this one.

If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. The main thing is the API has to be fairly simple, so the tutorial code is about Alfred and Alfred-Workflow, not dealing with the API. For this reason, it would have to be JSON-based and use fairly simple authentication (i.e. no OAuth or the like).

The GitHub API might actually be a good fit.

[invious]

How about using this Ruby Giphy Alfred Workflow and porting it to Python?

(this is my fork, which includes a swift script to put the giphy on the pasteboard, which was my only addition. The ruby source includes a library that to my untrained eye seems to appear to be similar to what you are doing with python, also written by the author of the script)

[deanishe]

Thanks for the suggestion. It covers a lot of the bases, but I don't think it lends itself to demonstrating the caching and filtering features :(

[vitorgalvao]

Pinboard’s API is based on Delicious’, even the things that don’t make much sense.

Since delicious is free, that might be the easiest way to convert the tutorial to a free service.

[deanishe]

Pinboard's API is based on the del.icio.us API from 10 years ago.

I don't think del.icio.us still offers an API. At least I couldn't find any mention of it.

[deanishe]

Perhaps a weather API, like DarkSky?

Or I could use an existing workflow, like this Smart Folders one, which is based on mdfind.

Heck, I could add a simple API to my icon generator. I'd have to add authentication, too though, to demonstrate the Keychain API ☹️

[deanishe]

So, the library features the tutorial should cover are:

• Saving data
• Caching data
• Keychain
• HTTP (ideally)
• Filtering data (partially covered by Alfred)
• Saving settings (partially covered by Alfred)
• Catching errors (partially covered by Alfred)

The idea candidate is a simple (JSON-based?), authenticated HTTP API that returns a few hundred searchable, "recent" data.

An authenticated RSS feed might be a good fit. Is there a free service that offers any suitable ones?

[mittelgrau]

Have thought about using something simple like this one?

[deanishe]

Thanks, @mittelgrau. I'll definitely keep that in mind if there isn't a suitable API that does something useful.

[lisaross]

I know this is from ages ago, but if you're still looking for something you could use that's free and covers all your criteria above @deanishe, I think the rebrandly api might do the trick. https://developers.rebrandly.com/docs

I'm going to try to repurpose what you've done using their API to see if I can pull in some shortlinks similarly to how you've done with pinboard. If I can get it working (I'm also re-learning Python at the same time, so I may not) I'll share it here for you to use if you like.