Meh API

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Hey, we’ve got a Meh API now (in beta). That’s an Application Program Interface - which lets you get a JSON feed with data about our daily deal.

Why would you do that? Sure, you can just go to Meh.com to check what we’re selling, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter, but what if you want to see us on Google Plus, Pinterest, ello.co, or whatever the kids are using these days? A developer can use our API to connect Meh.com daily deal data with just about anything.

Maybe you’d like an app on your phone. Or you want to set your Nest thermostat to 98 degrees, flash your Hue lights red and have your Sphero ball race around in circles any time there’s a Fukubukuro for sale. You could probably hack all that together with our API.

Or, you could just be learning how to code and you want to build something beyond Hello World programs. If you hadn’t noticed, we’re about the simplest ecommerce site out there. Coding up a Meh app might be the easiest way to pick up some new skills.

So here’s how it works:

Register your Meh application

Go to https://meh.com/api to register your Meh application and get an API key.

We’re asking for you to register so we can see your app’s API usage, and so we can shut it down if you turn out to be evil. At this time we don’t have any API limits, but do us a favor and don’t hit the API excessively. No more than one request a minute seems reasonable.

Also, if you come up with a good enough idea we’ll likely want to build an official version of it. Registering your app gives us a way to contact you if we’re going to steal your idea.

Get your API key

Once you’ve registered we’ll give you an API key.

Access the Meh API

With your API key you can now make an HTTP GET request to https://meh.com/api/1/current.json?apikey={your-api-key}

Here’s a Gist of the output:

The returned JSON data represents the deal, poll, and video currently on the meh.com homepage.

Deal

  • features: The features of the deal in Markdown format.
  • id: The unique identifier of the deal.
  • items: An array of items for this deal. Items represent the individual products available for purchase and contain attributes (key/value pairs such as Color: Georgia Red), condition (New or Refurbished), the item’s unique identifier, the price, and a photo URL.
  • launches: We break the meh.com daily deal into three launches as outlined here. The launches array provides data about the status of these launches.
  • photos: An array of image URLs for the deal.
  • title: The title of the deal.
  • soldOutAt: If the deal has sold out, this field contains a timestamp of when the last item was purchased.
  • specifications: The full product specs of the deal in Markdown format.
  • story: The deal’s story, including the title and the body in Markdown format.
  • theme: The theme for the deal including the accent color, background color, background image, and whether the foreground is light or dark.
  • topic: Data about the forum topic for the deal including how many comments, replies, votes the topic has and the topic’s URL.
  • url: The full permalink of the deal.

Poll

  • answers: An array of possible answers to the poll. Each answer includes a unique identifier, the answer text, and the number of votes that answer has received.
  • id: The unique identifier of the poll.
  • startDate: The timestamp of when the poll started.
  • title: The title of the poll.
  • topic: Data about the forum topic for the poll including how many comments, replies, votes the topic has and the topic’s URL.

Video

  • id: The unique identifier of the video.
  • startDate: The timestamp of when the video started.
  • title: The title of the video.
  • topic: Data about the forum topic for the video including how many comments, replies, votes the topic has and the topic’s URL.
  • url: The URL to the video.

Now go build something awesome

If you manage to get anything working, post about it in the forum so we can all try it out. And if you’re not a coder (but somehow still made it to the end here), post any ideas you have and maybe some enterprising developer can make it happen.