Databook has always been two projects in one.
The first project is our data pipeline that collects, normalizes and republishes normalized NYC Open Data so that other people can use it.
The second is to build a general purpose app that makes this information understandable and useful for the public.
In the beginning of the project, we used CartoDB’s API platform to publish the data that comes out of our pipeline. It was easy to deploy, fast and efficient, but it didn’t allow us to control how we share API access with the public. So, we switched to a custom solution that uses the open source FastAPI framework and PostgreSQL.
You can find our new API, along with Swagger docs, at databook-api.wegov.nyc.
The code for our API is posted on Github.
We want to help people use our normalized data! If you’re interested in using another of the data used in Databook or want to use our data directly from our API, please let us know.