

Show HN: I built a free oEmbed API for the web - samsnelling
http://oembed.io/

======
ryanackley
I don't want to sound like I'm being negative because this is really cool.
When you promise that it will always be free, my immediate thought is that
it's unsustainable. You're putting yourself into the position of one day
breaking your promise or shutting down the service if you don't find some
other business model to build on. Why not leave the door open for charging
later on?

oEmbed is a standard, therefore you're not locking anyone into your platform
by making it free now and charging later. If they don't like the price, they
can just switch back to Emed.ly or some other provider.

~~~
samsnelling
I completely understand where you are coming from -- Just had this
conversation with someone over twitter.

oEmbed is a standard, and I really think there are a lot of cool things that
can be done with it given the opportunity. Currently, the API is not rate
limited, but this may be something I will have to look into in the future (I
have only load tested up to 250req/sec). I will be adding a TOS in the few
weeks.

Where I do plan on charging, is expanding the api to include a "kitchen sink"
where I include all data that I can possible grab from a URL. I think this
will add real value to the API, and I will end up charging for it once it is
finished (probably a few months down the road).

oEmbed.io will always be free. If you want to pay or don't like my conditions,
then you can go use embed.ly. But I genuinely feel like this is a contribution
I am willing to make to the community.

Hopefully that sheds a little more light on where my head is at with this!

------
panzi
I like the concepts behind iframely better than those behind oEmbed, because
you get an iframe URL, which is safer to embed than 3rd party HTML and you can
change the size of the iframe on your own (no need for another request to get
the embed code of another size). Their endpoint isn't free, but their software
is. So you can run your own iframely server, if you want.
[https://github.com/itteco/iframely](https://github.com/itteco/iframely)
[http://iframely.com/](http://iframely.com/)
[http://iframely.com/debug](http://iframely.com/debug)

I submitted a few patches concerning HTML parsing, Google Maps, OpenStreetMap,
Magnatune.com, OCReMix.org, Firefox Marketplace, Tindeck.com (and a few tiny
bugfixes).

~~~
iparamonau
Thanks for the mention (and contributing) Mathias.

A quick clarification: #1: our endpoint is "community" one. It's free and open
for dev purposes, but it's not suggested for production use as one can easily
self-host it (though we use same server for number of heavy traffic apps like
Iframely for Gmail chrome ext).

#2: Iframely now has the oEmbed endpoint too. We trim much richer infos into
oembed format for backwards compatibility.

------
justinph
Anything that further pushes and supports oEmbed is a great thing. It would be
nice to see a list of what providers you support -- I don't want to callback
every URL in a blog post or other thing to you, and you probably don't want me
doing that either.

~~~
samsnelling
Great idea -- I will add a list of providers. I will say I support close to
200. If you are interested in that list in the short term, get in touch with
me and I'll send you that list :) Contact info is on the page :)

Thanks!

~~~
coleifer
I believe embedly exposes a list of regular expressions for matching URLs --
if you would share your regexes that be very helpful to library developers.

~~~
samsnelling
Absolutely! Thanks for this! I will get a nice and neat list together for
everyone.

Again, if you need it short term -- don't hesitate to reach out!

------
ecesena
Any js library such as [1]?

In our service we're oembedding external content but we're a bit frustrated as
often things stop working and maintaining the js library is an extra effort.

I spoke with the author of [1], but he was not really into using 3rd party
services...

[1] [https://github.com/starfishmod/jquery-oembed-
all](https://github.com/starfishmod/jquery-oembed-all)

~~~
samsnelling
I have one prototyped, but I don't want to give you something until I have
absolute confidence in it. Glad to know that you're interested!

If you let me know your email, I will be sure to reach out to you once it is
finished!

If you have any other ideas, let me know! :)

~~~
ecesena
Awesome! I've updated my profile with the email.

I think also a server-side library would be useful. You might think to use a
service like Mashape to avoid the problem of choosing a language.

Edit: oh, and mobile. We're having a lot of troubles replicating the same
embed experience on iOS (and I have no experience on android/windows phone, so
I assume the worse ;)

------
ismaelc
[https://www.mashape.com/snellingio/oembed-
io-1#!documentatio...](https://www.mashape.com/snellingio/oembed-
io-1#!documentation)

------
samsnelling
Just wanted to update here that a /providers endpoint has been added:
[http://oembed.io/providers](http://oembed.io/providers)

------
rmena123
Ill be at the startupschool sat., if you need any graphic/ui design work for
this project, let me know, ill help you out. Rmena123 @ gma i l . Hope to see
you around.

------
_nvs
Awesome - definitely going to use this. Congrats on the front page HN launch
the week before Startup School!

------
marveller
Would be interesting to see the actual contents (playable videos, etc.) too.

~~~
samsnelling
Absolutely! As you can see in the responses for youtube, vimeo, etc -- I do
include the responsive HTML.

I will make a better inspector so you can interactively see what is being
sent, and what you are getting back :)

