TOPIC:

Hello. I'm a computer programmer and am in a Toastmasters club for programmers - TechMasters. We keep making fully custom websites instead of using Free Toast Host. I think we should stick to using Free Toast Host, personally, but need help with buy in.

One thing I was wondering was API support. I wanted to know how good it was. Come to find it's non-existent.

I've seen the other threads on this topic. They keep saying that the code is proprietary, so we can't have an API.

Excuse me: what?!?

APIs do not expose your code. They just provide a simple way to get the same information and functionality but in a different manner.

For example, instead of going to myclub.toastmastersclubs.org/agenda to visually see an agenda, maybe I just want the information. So you make a JSON end point like toastmastersclubs.org/[myclubnumber]/agenda/[some key or date] and then you'd get a JSON block with the same information. I could then use this to display somewhere else.

You can also expose endpoints to change data like signing up for roles or adding members, etc. This is not hard. You have all the code for it. You just need to expose the code to authorized users.

For example, Meetup has an amazing API. I'm contemplating writing code to announce meetings from our site and add speaker bios from our database into the Meetup details, etc.

There's absolutely zero reason not to do this.

There's absolutely no excuse for not doing this.

There's absolutely no excuse for this not being priority number one, in all honesty. Soooooo much functionality and value would be added by such a simple gesture.

Will there be problems or breaking changes in the future? Sure! Who cares?!? We'll adapt. And we won't complain, I promise. Just put in release notes explaining the breaking change or do the versioning thing (put the version number in the API calls).

Thanks for all the hard work you guys do. I hope this gets a legitimate look in the near future.

I definitely second that. Well put. I too am a programmer and have been very frustrated with many aspects of FTH2, a few of which could be resolved by providing an API. Some of the changes to FTH2 lately have made preparing meeting agenda much more difficult. I would have preferred an open source framework like DotNetNuke for the platform instead of the current one.

I too would like to see this! You can keep hold of your proprietary rights, but if you provide a RESTful API, it will allow other people to expand upon your service, and make it a richer experience. Examples of proprietary but open APIs include Google, Facebook, Twitter, and many more companies that provide some level of access. Also most government organizations provide this too. If you need any help or have questions, there are plenty of us here who would help you make this possible!

I look forward to seeing what you cook up in terms of developer access!