Some Random API
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A New Beginning for Some Random API

Some Random API has gotten a refresh and will be heading in a new direction.

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Hi All,

I know this is a long awaited update and I would love to say it’s been all sunshine and rainbows but realistically that would be a lie.

As many of you may know a year ago today the original maintainer of Some Random API (Also Known as “SRA”, this is how I will refer to the project now) sadly passed away.

When this happened a lot of things changed. Including the way this project was heading as it was uncertain whether or not things would be able to continue. Though thanks to the change Telk made, after an offer I made to help host SRA, it meant I had control over how Some Random API ran.

A lot hasn’t really changed since his passing with regards to SRA and that’s been good and bad. We’ll start with the bad and get to the good news.

The bad

  • Some Random API has been slowly dying and requests per day have been slowly declining and the project has a lot of cobwebs
  • The old code base is very crowded:
    • The API, Website and Discord Bot all run on this one process. Making it entirely unscalable.
    • The process eats a lot of memory. For instance, node alocates a max memory limit of 2GB I’ve had to set this to 4GB to keep the app running.

Please understand none of this is being blamed on Telk, I had so many conversations with him about doing a rewrite but because of the size of the codebase and how many things were intertwined we both agreed it would be better to keep on fixing things as they broke. That included when node versions changed and so on.

A lot of the maintenance was being carried out by me around 6 months before Telk passed anyway and that was fine for Telk as he was going through a lot IRL at the time.
This included when the some-random-api.ml domain got seized by a bad actor and I bought and setup the new domain.

Anyway, thats enough of the bad lets get onto the good.

The good

Over the last 2-3 months I have been putting as much work as I can into getting Some Random API to a state where it can be scaled. Updated and also be bigger than ever.

The website will get a facelift shortly but the API has been fully rewritten and the documentation is compeletely done too!

Things are bound to change for instance:

  • Routes are going to be re-organised.
  • The documentation repository is going to be open-sourced to allow community contributions.
  • Premium is going to move away from Patreon and be moved in-house to allow better handling of payments.

Right now SRA relies on Patreon to keep up and running so if you’re able to spare even a dollar a month it’ll help keep the show rolling!

What you can try out now!

The new API is up and running and is likely to keep getting updates now.

How can you do this?

  • First, check out the documentation and have a look around.
  • Try out the new API hosted at ➡️ https://api.some-random-api.com

What’s happening with the old API?

The old API will be still be there for the time being.

However it will not be maintained, therefore if it breaks. You should move to the new API… then if thats broke… complain 😅.

It’s worth mentioning that endpoints under some-random-api.com WILL be decomissioned at some point in the future. I just have not planned a when yet. When I do have a date I will make sure there is ample time. That and I will leave a notice on any old route with a message to notify of the change.