The Designer News API v2 provides a simple HTTP-based, REST-based mechanism for interacting with Designer News. It uses OAuth 2.0 as an authentication mechanism, and the JSON API for all request and response payloads.
Our discovery of JSON API fixes a lot of problems with the first version of the Designer News API, namely: consistency and performance. JSON API is predictable and consistent in how it is structured, allowing libraries to increase the amount of code reuse.
Because JSON API has a very sensible way of relating to linked documents, e.g. which stories has a user posted, this allows us to cut down on the nesting of data in responses. With less nesting, the response paylods become smaller. This can have a big effect on mobile clients, where bandwidth could be limited.
If you would like to include the linked resources in a response, that’s easy too.
This document is living and breathing. You can see its individual pieces on its GitHub repo.
If you find any mistakes or need clarification in a certain section, please open an issue or a pull request.