Today we're opening our public table API to analysts and developers.
The public table API makes it easier to get your datasets into Mode using scripts written in languages like Python, Ruby, and R. Data uploaded through the API is available as tables in our public PostgreSQL data warehouse. Once you've loaded your data you can join it with any other public table in the warehouse, regardless of who loaded it. The other unique benefit is that you can see all of the reports in Mode that reference, remix, and visualize your data. We think this creates an entirely new way for the community to work together and we can't wait to see what people will build.
Analyzing Hacker News
One of the first open source projects we developed around the API is a Python Uploader that imports CSVs either locally or from a URL. As an example, below is a visualization of how posts gain and lose popularity on Hacker News.
We used the tools developed by our friends at Kimono to set up an API that scrapes Hacker News. A basic cron job pushes the data into this table each hour. Then, after writing a simple SQL query and visualization, voilà: you can watch posts move through the Hacker News ranks.
As with any analysis on Mode, if you want to start working with the data in a new way, simply click on "Results a la Mode" and clone the project into your own workspace.
API Support
We're looking forward to seeing how developers use the Mode API to foster open analysis. To get started, take a look at the documentation at developer.modeanalytics.com.
If you’ve got questions for our team, we're typically on HipChat between 10 and 6 Pacific. You can also email us at hi@modeanalytics.com.
