

Ask HN: What's Your Favorite API Developer Portal? - rahim

We're gearing up to redesign our massively outdated Developer Portal and I'd love some examples of API dev portals done right. Folks like Twilio and Tokbox are on the list, who else? Please also say what you like about it and what (if anything) you wish they'd improve.
======
dtsingletary
Parse's portal gets a great melding of form, function, and philosophy.
<http://www.parse.com>

FullContact's portal has some nifty navigation on the documentation:
<http://www.fullcontact.com/developer/docs/>

An honorable mention should goto the creativity behind Twitter's Field Guide:
<https://dev.twitter.com/docs/platform-objects>

~~~
caseysoftware
Absolutely agreed on Parse. My only criticism is bookmarking doesn't work very
well.

Mashery also puts together some solid docs via their iodocs system -
<https://github.com/mashery/iodocs/>

~~~
mattieuga
What has been your issue bookmarking on Parse?

------
templaedhel
Not as well known (yet) but Clever has some nifty docs that allow for creating
and testing queries against demo data right from the page.

<https://getclever.com/developers/docs>

------
frankdenbow
Stripe does a great job with their portal. Mashery as well has a great
interactive portal that I like to use.

------
captn3m0
Github is also quite good (<http://developer.github.com>). They are straight
forward docs for developer, and the prospect that the complete site is on
github itself is a +1. I had some troubles with Cors support recently, and
found it part of the spec within two clicks from their main portal. Try to

a) Keep headings readable (nothing fancy) and un-ambiguous. Don't make me
wonder whether I have to go to Authorization or Authentication for instance.

b) Document everything. Even small nuances that you feel are implied. The API
specs should change before your API changes.

c) Give me an archived version somewhere. This is easier if you just release
your docs as a repo on github. This _really_ helps people out. I ended up
converting the parse.com documentation to markdown just to get an offline,
readable version for myself.

------
apievangelist
I second Stripe, Twilio, Tokbox, Dwolla as leaders in good implementation--
then add Full Contact, Iron.io, Etsy, Factual and Foursquare to that stack.

But definitely look at the oldest developer areas with eBay, Salesforce and
Amazon. They have been doing it a while.

------
tjlytle
CloudMine (<https://cloudmine.me>) recently updated their dashboard, and while
I haven't had a chance to really work through it all, it looks pretty nice.s

Since it's backend as a service, allowing access to view/edit/troubleshoot the
data is key.

Also, CloudMailin's (<http://www.cloudmailin.com/>) 'Try it Live!' is a pretty
nice demo of the API.

------
andrewmwatson
Pusher has a great realtime console, Stripe has stellar documentation and
Foursquare has great developer features like testing recent push
notifications.

------
mschonfeld
I actually just rolled out a new Dev portal at Dwolla. He I it out over at
developers.dwolla.com. I tried to make it more of an integration portal, so
that there's something for coders, but also for non tech people trying to
figure out if Dwolla is right for them.

Mainly tho, I think that the 4sq model of being able to try out every method
on the fly is super important to devs...

------
jgeewax
Stripe is pretty spectacular.

------
asmithmd1
Foursquare lets you try out API calls that require authentication without
leaving the documentation page. They use the correct permission for your user
ID so you can see exactly what a logged in user will get back.

------
adrianparsons
Twilio's getting started documentation blew me away. A focus on what you can
build, and what you can get working quickly ("I just sent myself a TEXT.
Sweet!"). It's also better designed than most consumer web apps.

------
martinnormark
Campaign Monitor is pretty awesome: <http://www.campaignmonitor.com/api/>

