The document discusses The Guardian's open platform and API. It provides a brief history of The Guardian's website and outlines how developers can build applications that retrieve and display Guardian content and metadata through URL hacking, RSS feeds, and combiners. It then introduces The Guardian's Content API and Data Store, which allow programmatic access to over 10 years of content and metadata in order to power third-party applications. Examples are given of how the expenses API was built and how the Guardian content can be displayed on other sites.

1. Mashing up
Michael Brunton-Spall
michael.brunton-spall@guardian.co.uk
@mibgames

2. About Us
Online since 1995
250M+ pages per month
30M+ visitors per month

3. 1995 - Guardian Online

4. 1999 - Guardian Unlimited

5. 1999 - Removed the registration wall

6. 2007 - Rebuild and Redesign

7. 2007 - Rebuild and Redesign

8. 2007 - Rebuild and Redesign

9. 2009 - MPs Expenses

10. Developing The Guardian

11. The Hackable Guardian
Url Hacking
Keyword Combiners
RSS Feeds

12. Url Hacking
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
[section]/[keyword]
technology/internet
[section]/all
environment/all
[publication]/[date]/[newspapersection]
theguardian/2009/jun/11/technologyguardian
profile/[name]
profile/bobbiejohnson

13. RSS Feeds
RSS Everywhere!
[section]/[keyword]/rss
technology/internet/rss
[section]/all /rss
environment/all/rss
[publication]/[date]/[newspapersection]/rss
theguardian/2009/jun/11/technologyguardian/rss
profile/[name]/rss
profile/bobbiejohnson/rss

14. Full Fat!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/snapperwolf/

17. Url Combiners
A Logical AND
Almost any combination from before
technology/internet+profile/bobbiejohnson
theguardian/technologyguardian+technology/internet
Except things that aren't actual tags:
Dated newspaper sections
theguardian/2009/jun/11... + anything = 404
the all page
.../all + anything = 404

18. Problems with this approach
Fragile
No Discovery
Not well documented
Copyright Issues

19. Build applications with the Guardian

20. Open Platform
Opening up how we work with people both internally
and externally
A suite of services enabling partners to build
applications with the Guardian
Content API
Data Store

21. Data Store
A directory of useful data curated by Guardian editors

22. Data Store
A directory of useful data curated by Guardian editors

23. Data Store

24. Data Store

25. Content API
A service for selecting and collecting content from the
Guardian for re-use

26. Content API
A service for selecting and collecting content from the
Guardian for re-use

27. Content API
Search content

28. Content API
Xml and Json

29. Content API
Tag Metadata

30. Content API
Full Article Body

31. Content API
Filters

32. So why?
guardian.co.uk has an amazing amount of
quality content
Incredible amounts of meta-data, curated by
editors
Aim to allow the guardian to become a rich
source of facts and journalism for the web

33. How?
Backed of our search platform
Provides access to 10 years of article content and
metadata
Supports multiple output formats: XML, JSON, ATOM
Supported free text search across content
Search for keywords
Guardian supported api projects in Java, PHP, Python
and Ruby
Community supported api projects in Perl, ActionScript
and Coldfusion (and probably more?)

34. Pricing

35. Pricing
FREE!

36. How free is free?
You can publish full articles from the guardian on your
website
5k queries per day limit
24 hour maximum cache lifetime
Online support
Partner with us on advertising

37. Beta trial
Limited number of keys
Collecting feedback
Will open more widely at end of beta program

38. How do I use it?
Home page
http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform
Sign up for an API key at
http://guardian.mashery.com
Use the API Explorer at
http://api.guardianapis.com/docs/
Use the python library at
http://code.google.com/p/openplatform-python/

39. What can I do with it?
Search our tag hierarchy
Find content by tag
Find content by search terms
Display on your website!

40. MP's Expenses

41. MP's Expenses
Written in Django
Hosted on EC2
Easy to modify
Written in 2 weeks

42. MP's Expenses
An MP's Page

43. View
def mp(request, id):
mp = get_object_or_404(MP, pk = id)
...
return render(request, 'mp.html', {
'mp': mp,
'documents': mp.documents.all(),
'top_users': top_users[:5],
})

44. View
def mp(request, id):
mp = get_object_or_404(MP, pk = id)
...
return render(request, 'mp.html', {
'mp': mp,
'documents': mp.documents.all(),
'top_users': top_users[:5],
})

45. View
def mp(request, id):
mp = get_object_or_404(MP, pk = id)
...
return render(request, 'mp.html', {
'mp': mp,
'documents': mp.documents.all(),
'top_users': top_users[:5],
})

46. Using the Guardian API
Getting all articles about an MP
results = client.search(q='"%S"' % (name))
returns a paginating iterator
for x in results:
print x['headline']
Shows only first 10 by default

47. Get the client
def mp(request, id):
mp = get_object_or_404(MP, pk = id)
...
client = Client(settings.GUARDIAN_APIKEY)
return render(request, 'mp.html', {
'mp': mp,
'documents': mp.documents.all(),
'top_users': top_users[:5],
})

48. Make the request
def mp(request, id):
mp = get_object_or_404(MP, pk = id)
...
client = Client(settings.GUARDIAN_APIKEY)
return render(request, 'mp.html', {
'mp': mp,
'documents': mp.documents.all(),
'top_users': top_users[:5],
'articles': client.search(q='"%s"'%(mp.name)),
})

49. Update the template
<div id="about-mp">
<ul>
{% for article in articles %}
<li>
<a href="{{article.webUrl}}">{{article.headline}}</a>
</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</div>

50. And the result!

51. Additions?
Use Memcached to cache the response from guardian API
Don't create a new client each time
Article bodies

52. Who else is using it?

53. Who else is using it?

54. Who else is using it?

55. Who else is using it?

56. Public API Key?
jbynv3fwdp8ju5625mt2axw3
Only 5k queries a day
Will be closed on Friday 14th August
Will be closed if abused
Strongly encourage you to sign up for your own key

57. Questions?

58. Mashing up
Michael Brunton-Spall
michael.brunton-spall@guardian.co.uk
twitter: @mibgames