

Ask HN: What is the best example of api documentation you know? - sootn

I am researching documentation for api&#x27;s. What makes a good documentation? What sections and articles are interesting for new and old users etc? Do you have any favorite documentation and why?
Thanks
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murtza
Twilio, Stripe, Parse, Sendgrid, Mailgun are examples of companies with good
documentation.

Generally, I like to see a high-level overview of the API, authentication
scheme, endpoints, sample request and response, error code explanations, and
sample code coverage in multiple languages. I wrote a blog post on this topic:

[http://murtza.org/creating-a-great-developer-
experience/](http://murtza.org/creating-a-great-developer-experience/)

~~~
RobSpectre
Much obliged for that. We still have a lot of work still here at Twilio to do
around our documentation - appreciate the vote of confidence. Some of the
stuff the DevX team is working on right now has me really excited.

Hope you'll share what you think when we release it.

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uka
I like stripe-s documentation for their REST API

[https://stripe.com/docs/api](https://stripe.com/docs/api)

curl examples are the thing that impress me the most ...

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vhf
Take a look at beautiful docs[0]

[0] [https://github.com/PharkMillups/beautiful-
docs](https://github.com/PharkMillups/beautiful-docs)

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doug1001
New York Times Article Search API:
[http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/read/article_search_api_v2](http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/read/article_search_api_v2)

everything a dev might ever want to know about constructing a query, calling
this API, and parsing the results--beautifully accessible from this homepage

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ndc
Examples examples examples. From the most common use cases to the less common.
With annotations and links to the endpoint reference.

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krrishd
I don't have a favorite company with good documentation, but these two tools
have been useful and seem well designed for creating docs: \-
[http://daux.io](http://daux.io) \- [http://raneto.com](http://raneto.com)

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nardbard
I second the vote for Twilio, adding NPR to the list
[http://dev.npr.org/#story-lists-api](http://dev.npr.org/#story-lists-api)

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650REDHAIR
Examples, examples, examples.

I also love the Google Maps API. They're certainly in my top 5 for API
documentation.

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sootn
Oo this is great everyone! I really like that sexy Stribe documentation. Thank
you

