Retrieving spatial datasets with ease through an application programming interface (API)

Abstract

In the context of searching for Open datasets, there is a still a limited understanding of the efficient ways to access them. Using an Application Programming Interface (API) is one of the ways that developers mostly use. However, there is still a need for refined APIs with greater learnability in the context of accessing Open data. In this work, we developed a RESTful API with a capability to retrieve spatial datasets easily from API level by querying in terms of parameters, namely Space, Time, and Theme. To achieve that we made two assumptions. Firstly, expressing the temporal parameter in a natural language (e.g. today, last year, etc) benefits the developers in many ways as it avoids having to deal with rigid date format. Secondly, if the API can accept parameters in any order, it saves the developers time as they don't have to spend extra time learning about the parameters order and they can simply focus on the main task. A user-study with 20 participants was done to evaluate the API in terms of its learnability. Half of the participants had prior experience of querying datasets from API level and remaining did not. The evaluation result was promising as both categories of participants found the API easily learnable. This means such API has the potential to restrain the problem of developers compulsion to spend a lot of time before becoming really productive. Likewise, it also had the potential to pave a way towards the next generation API as it addresses the problem of lacking refined APIs to access Open Government data easily.