active Developer Blog

(cross-posted from the Product Development Blog)

I'm happy to announce that we've opened the API that powers http://searchbeta.active.com, the solution scheduled to become the new Search engine behind active.com in the coming months. By opening the API we're hoping developers will think of interesting ways to use and mashup our data. The API provides programmatic access into our core directory of assets, including:

• Events
• Classes
• Tournaments
• Training Plans
• Race Results
• Articles

While this data was already available before through the Asset Syndication API, it is now possible to conduct relevancy-based searches based on keywords. Plus, the new Search API is fast and allows for a variety of output formats including:

• XML
• HTML
• RSS
• JSON

The Search API is documented at http://developer.active.com/docs#search. Signup for access on developer.active.com, we'll approve your application and get you going. And let us know what you think of the API, either by commenting on this blog, in our API forum, or by sending a tweet to @jgrahamthomas.

(cross-posted from the Active.com Product Development Blog)

Sportspower is a leading highschool team sports ranking website. It contains a complicated algorithm that factors in things like win/loss record, homefield advantage, state division and school size to calculate team rankings at the divisional and national levels. Take a look at the national ranking for "mega" highschool football teams on Sportspowerhttp://www.sportspower.com/football/teams/high-school/football/texas/cedar-hill-longhorns/2034/ratings/mega/spc.

Rankings data is available through an open API, and we partnered early on with ESPN Rise to feature football rankings on their site. Check out the bottom right-hand corner of http://espn.go.com/high-school-sports/rise/football/ where they build a widget consuming the Rankings API. The API is now available for all developers to leverage in their applications or websites.

Read up on the Sportspower API on developer.active.com. Typically, the API is used to:

1. Determine the geographic context for ranking data by querying the Playoff Group, Playoff Subgroups or Sportspower School Size Classification API for the relevant group ID (i.e. "60" for all very large highschools in the United States).
2. Use the geographic context (group ID) to get a list of rankings for a given sport.

During the initial rollout, only highschool football (api.sportspower.com/football/) and basketball (api.sportspower.com/basketball/) is supported with lacrosse data from laxpower.com soon to follow.

(cross-posted from community.active.com)

Livestrong.com and ESPN Rise are new additions to a growing list of websites featuring active.com data through integration to the active.com API. As Geoff Skow writes on developer.active.com:

Demand Media's LIVESTRONG.com, a “practical resource to find a wealth of health-related information from a wide range of sources”, taps into the Active.com directory of community events to add to the relevance and usefulness of its business listings. For example, the site includes an Active-powered list of nearby events to each of the pages in its Restaurant section:

ESPN Rise uses the SportsPower API Service to better fulfill its goal of offering “all the latest high school sports information, including scores, stats, rankings, polls and athlete profiles”. The site features the top ranked high school football teams across five classifications according to the Active Power Ratings. New ratings and rankings are unveiled every week throughout the season, and are generated at the national, state and local level.

We're excited about the uptake of our API and hope to see developers do new and innovative things with our data. You can read more about our API on programmableweb.com at http://www.programmableweb.com/api/active or read through the api specification at http://developer.active.com/docs.

Our initial intention was to use the active.com API mostly for sharing data with business partners.  We've since seen a lot of interest across the developer community and have approved a bunch of applications for developers looking to create iPhone applications or niche websites.  We've also updated our API profile on Programmable Web and have expanded API coverage to include tennis tournaments (here's a query that returns all future tennis tournaments happening within 50 miles of Brooklyn, NY, for example: http://api.amp.active.com/assets/tennis?zip=10471&distance=50&api_key=rnxjx6ts3pg579gvrbe42qn7). 

If any of this interests you, create an account, then register for a key.  We'll likely approve you within a few day's time.

I noticed today that I had mistakingly allowed open registration for the Asset Syndication Service, and that several developers had registered.  I had to change the developers accounts from "active", meaning they had full use of the API, to "waiting", meaning they have no use of the API, as we're still in the configuration stages of things here.

My apologies for any inconveniences here.  We plan to restrict API access to only approved developers and business partners, and will be doing so in the near future.

We're in the early stages of setting up our API.  It's interesting how word spreads so quickly on the internet, however, that active.com is rolling out a new API.  I tweeted this URL to somebody who follows me on twitter a few weeks ago.  As far as I know, that was the only mention of active.mashery.com.  But now we're profiled in programmableweb!  Awesome. 

The bad news is this:

1. We're about a month away from supporting our API.  When this is complete the URL for this portal will be http://developer.active.com. 
2. Initially we're only looking to roll it out with a few business partners.  We'll also entertain the idea of rolling it out to developers, pending a review of their business case.

But, I'm excited about how developers will want to use our API and am looking forward to working with them to see if we can find a mutually beneficial solution.  More to come soon.