Selection of API categories

[Nazarah]

API needs to be filtered or sorted according to their functionality and purpose.
Need to have a set of categories selected.

[Nazarah]

@philippeluickx : would you like to co-pilot?

[philippeluickx]

Sure thing, next Tuesday?

[Nazarah]

👍

[kyyberi]

Categories do not work when amount of APIs is high. That can be seen for example in programmableweb.com. Exploring other options might be good.

[kyyberi]

Using multiple tags instead of distinct categories is brilliant. It serves the complex reality of APIs, where very few APIs belong in one category only. Putting APIs in multiple categories causes other UX issues. Furthermore, it probably makes it a lot easier to develop algorithms for suggestions and relatedness

[kyyberi]

Better yet, explore option to utilize AI to build maps (relations etc) of APIs. Watson understands English: input API meta data -> utilize results.

[philippeluickx]

+1 on Jarko's ideas. Generally pre-defined categories lead to bad design and experience. Free tags would be best, but I would add an autocomplete (at least) when adding tags. Maybe also have a suggest feature or display the most used ones.

[Nazarah]

I am listing API categories on market mashup, IBM and programmable web.
Market mashup's sounds a reasonable list, although @kyyberi 's logic outweights this.
Categories can be populated based on a given list as well as customized ones.
However I am also considering API filtering based on the protocols they use and life phase

[Nazarah]

Added the document listing API protocols.
https://github.com/apinf/docs/blob/master/docs/research/API%20Protocols
@philippeluickx , @kyyberi want to have a look and contribute? :)

[philippeluickx]

Didn't even know all of them... Good docs!