ArcGIS is a complete mapping and analytics platform for developers, with a robust set of APIs for finding an address, search for places, get directions, calculate drive time, and route to the closest destination. ArcGIS provides a robust set of mapping solutions to rival Google Maps, allowing developers to integrate location-based functionality into their web and mobile applications. While profiling the ArcGIS Rest API for the Streamdata.io API Gallery we stumbled across a Postman Collection for the API, which reduces friction when on-boarding with the API.
ESRI in Spain has published a pretty robust Postman Collection for working with the ArcGIS service and made it available on Github. The machine-readable definition allows you to get up and running with the ArcGIS API in minutes, instead of hours or days using the traditional documentation. The Postman Collection allows you to import the details of the ArcGIS API into the Postman Client, where you can quickly begin to configure your environment and begin making precise calls to the API. Making on-boarding with the powerful API something that is much easier than the traditional way, saving you time that can be spent actually understanding what is possible with the geo-location and mapping solution.
We encourage all API providers to provide a Postman Collection for their APIs. It reduces friction on-boarding with their API and helps ensure they’ll go from discovery to integration in as quick as time possible. It also allows API service providers to easily integrate common APIs into our solutions, allowing us to easily publish an API into the Streamdata.io API Gallery, and allow for one click proxying of APIs using our streaming service. Static, and even interactive documentation isn’t sufficient anymore, and providing an OpenAPI definition, as well as runtime ready Postman Collections has become the default for API providers when it comes to publishing documentation for their APIs.
If you have any ideas for streaming solutions on top of the ArcGIS, feel free to share them with us. We are still profiling the API as part of the Streamdata.io API Gallery, and haven’t had time to play with the API. If you see opportunities for streaming data or publishing webhooks, and other event-driven solutions based upon geographic data, please let us know. We’d like to begin exploring the intersection of event-driven architecture and the mapping world, providing a more real-time experience when it comes to navigating the physical world around us.
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