tecznotes

Digg launched their API this evening, something that's been a long time in coming. We first worked with Digg to help design it back in mid-2006, in support of the Digg Labs project that launched in late summer. Since that time, and among other work, we've been slowly expanding its range and working out kinks and inconsistencies. Today, I'm proud to say that the new Digg API totally kicks ass.

Available endpoints include lists of stories, users, diggs, topics, and comments. The whole thing is available in four flavors: XML, JSON, Javascript, and serialized PHP. We designed in a few niceties for site owners, like being able to search for stories based on URL or domain, and added awareness of friends, users, and comments. We did not design any read/write endpoints, because the jury is still out on how to support digging and submission via an API without letting in all the crazy hackbots. Stay tuned on that one.

Also included in today's announcements are the contest and the Digg Flash Development Kit, the latter developed by Shawn. Although we're not releasing the display code used to run Stack or Swarm, everything else used to build those tools is included: API support, call scheduler, object model, etc. It's quite a bit to get my head around.