
Ask HN: Examples for badly designed (web) APIs - tonyjstark
For a workshop I want to give some negative examples of badly designed APIs so that groups can work out the negative parts and how to improve them, anyone has some examples?
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gick
I am not sure if its fit in the "bad design" category you look for but
OpenStreetMap API has various usability problems.

[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6)

The main issue has I see it is that all API functions accepts only XML as
content-type. There is no way to use JSON, which is rather standard by now.
Even GET serves only XML.

Another issue is that the error messages for non-conform requests are not
informative enough. This is emphasize in the doc ("unfortunately error
messages are not consistent").

Finally, in my opinion, the doc do not provide simple and clear overview of
the API.

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tonyjstark
Thanks a ton!

