Still fresh off deploying Grub Grades I want to give a little more info on using publicly available data to build cool projects.
First off, what is NYC Open Data? It’s data made available by NYC city government that has datasets concerning anything from Wifi hotspots to compost drop off and air quality readings.
There’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with the data. For example, as a new feature on Grub Grades, I plan to map out the different restaurant grades via goolge maps just so you can get a nice visual of the grades in your area.
To get started on your own project, head over to NYC Open Data and look through some of the datasets.
There’s plenty of documentation on the API, which uses SoQL or the Socrata Query Language. It has a similar feel to SQL but has a lot of flexibility added. You can find more info here: Getting Started – Socrata API. It’s recommended that you sign up for an App Token before using the API too much, as it will eventually throttle you without one.
What’s really cool is that they let you test out the queries via hurl.it. This helps in adapting your queries without needing a third party solution such as Postman.
Try it out here: hurt.it
Cool, so I hope this was a nice intro to using NYC Open Data. It’s super awesome that we can play around with these lush datasets, but you should also be aware that some of the data will need to be handled in a way that filters out duplicates or other quirks the data might have.
Good luck!
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