Netflix API: Looking good
Netflix was pretty much the last place I was Web 2.0 style share cropping, creating value without a way to get it out. The Netflix API has been rumored for a long time, but with today’s release they really did an excellent job.
- REST, Atom, and Javascript APIs? CHECK
- Access to personal information using OAuth? CHECK
- Developer blog? CHECK
- API Explorer? CHECK (though why it’s a Firefox plugin, I can only guess)
Also versioned documentation, and a quite reasonable set of branding guidelines.
*The Netflix Web APIs provide the ability for you to integrate Netflix user services into your application. The APIs provide the following capabilities: - Performing searches of movies, TV series, cast members, and directors
- Retrieving catalog titles, including details about the title such as name, box art, director, cast, etc.
- Determining the subscriber’s relationship to a specific title, e.g, in queue, saved, available on DVD, etc.
- Managing and displaying queues for users
- Providing conveniences such as auto-completion of partial search terms typed by a user.
- Displaying a user’s ratings and reviews.
- Including functional Add and Play buttons in your web application.*
Congratulations to Netflix, and Mashery.