Journocoders workshop: APIs at the BBC

This month Journocoders is being kindly hosted by the BBC. We’ll be covering the basics of APIs, which allow you to interact with internet services and are heavily used by both data journalists and developers.

We’ll be getting to grips with general API concepts by using the BBC News Labs’ very cool News Juicer API. This is a way to access aggregated content from 400 publishers around the world (including the BBC) and its semantic data. We’ll write some simple queries, and then learn how to build a simple dynamic web page with data from the API.

The tutorial is still being written up but you can get a sneak preview (and help write it!) here (https://github.com/basilesimon/using-an-api-tutorial/).

Although no programming experience is required, we highly recommend taking the Codecademy jQuery course (http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/jquery) to help with the final section of the tutorial.

Important information:

• Please make sure your full name is on Meetup.com for our guest list.

• Unfortunately there will be no admittance after 7.30 so please be on time!

• The guest list will close up to 24 hours beforehand.

• There will be no food so make sure to grab a bite to eat beforehand.

• Make sure to bring a laptop.

Agenda: The session will run from 7.30pm to 9pm.

7.30pm: Show and Tell
7.45pm: Work through tutorial
8.45pm: Debrief
9.00pm: The pub!

Venue: We’ll be in New Broadcasting House, new headquarters of the BBC. Go in through the main entrance (Portland place) to Reception to collect your pass. We’ll have a small table with a Journocoders logo, and we’ll show you where to go from there.