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Show HN: Turn any website into an API HackMIT 2013

36 points by danysantiago 13y ago

Select anything on a website. If it is part of a table or a list, you get a URL which you can GET for a JSON representation of that list or table. Basically we are making an API for every website whether they like it or not.

tweeeyjg 13y ago
What was it like? I saw on the HackMIT website that firearms and weapons weren't allowed.
justhw 13y ago
Tried to run your extension, but kept getting error. Really neat idea, a beginning of something big. http://imgur.com/slvRZOT http://imgur.com/slvRZOT
sbruchmann 13y ago
So, what’s the advantage over YQL? http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/ http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/
- moneyrich4 13y ago
  it looks like yql is only for some sites and you need the sites api key, and this is any site "whether they like it or not" and it takes 2 clicks. cool project thought about doing this myself, gl!.
  - sbruchmann 13y ago
    No, you can use YQL for any site that you want and even combine multiple queries into a single one. I don’t see any reasons why this project needs to exist…
drakaal 13y ago
"whether they like it or not" Basically they admit that this is a scraping tool for doing things you shouldn't. Companies that want to sell you data do. Companies that provide data for free to use how you like do. This is basically automating stealing. I have really low moral standards but I can see the wrongness of this.
- icebraining 13y ago
  I haven't read the page, but from the title, I assume it's a scraper Sure, it can be used for copying data without permission. But not all data is hard to read because they don't want you to copy it. For example, I've built a scraper for a state-run website of company registrations. The data is public, just not in a machine readable format.
gailees 13y ago
This is awesome.
diziet 13y ago
Surely you are better off doing this locally rather than sending the data to your aws server?
- hack37 13y ago
  Source code is available. See chrome_extension/background.js. Change post url accordingly.
danpalmer 13y ago
This is cool, Import.io started doing a similar thing too a few years ago: http://import.io/ http://import.io/.
caffeinetocode 13y ago
Nice! Just got the back end up and running on my OSX machine.pointed the chrome plugin to my localhost. works like charm. Though this looks similar to eBay's ql.io(open source) , I feel this is much simpler.

36 points by danysantiago 13y ago

tweeeyjg 13y ago

What was it like? I saw on the HackMIT website that firearms and weapons weren't allowed.

justhw 13y ago

Tried to run your extension, but kept getting error. Really neat idea, a beginning of something big. http://imgur.com/slvRZOT http://imgur.com/slvRZOT

sbruchmann 13y ago

So, what’s the advantage over YQL? http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/ http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/

moneyrich4 13y ago
it looks like yql is only for some sites and you need the sites api key, and this is any site "whether they like it or not" and it takes 2 clicks. cool project thought about doing this myself, gl!.
- sbruchmann 13y ago
  No, you can use YQL for any site that you want and even combine multiple queries into a single one. I don’t see any reasons why this project needs to exist…

drakaal 13y ago

"whether they like it or not" Basically they admit that this is a scraping tool for doing things you shouldn't. Companies that want to sell you data do. Companies that provide data for free to use how you like do. This is basically automating stealing. I have really low moral standards but I can see the wrongness of this.

icebraining 13y ago
I haven't read the page, but from the title, I assume it's a scraper Sure, it can be used for copying data without permission. But not all data is hard to read because they don't want you to copy it. For example, I've built a scraper for a state-run website of company registrations. The data is public, just not in a machine readable format.

gailees 13y ago

This is awesome.

diziet 13y ago

Surely you are better off doing this locally rather than sending the data to your aws server?

hack37 13y ago
Source code is available. See chrome_extension/background.js. Change post url accordingly.

danpalmer 13y ago

This is cool, Import.io started doing a similar thing too a few years ago: http://import.io/ http://import.io/.

caffeinetocode 13y ago

Nice! Just got the back end up and running on my OSX machine.pointed the chrome plugin to my localhost. works like charm. Though this looks similar to eBay's ql.io(open source) , I feel this is much simpler.