External Dependency

External dependencies are phenomenal tools for transforming a website from being a static boring site to being a dynamic site full of interactivity based upon the user of the site.

For the purpose of this site my original intention was to make use of the Superhero Database API in order to randomly choose a superhero character for the user of the site to cosplay. This would give the user the ability to visit the site for cosplay inspiration when in doubt of which character they should cosplay next. This would have greatly suited the theme of the website. The issue in this implementation arose however when I was unable to get this API to work correctly with my site. Attempting to use the API resulted in 429 errors related to too many requests. I was unable to implement this API in my site, as a result I needed to implement a new external dependency. I also attempted to make use of the Marvel Comics API to retrieve character names however this API is suited for searching for a specific character and not a random character. With the implementation that I had envisioned getting the data of a random character was of great importance and that is why that API would have been ill suited to the purposes of this implementation.

Unfortunately the only API I was able to implement into the site in the remaining time was an API used for fetching jokes. I feel that the use of this joke API helps to represent the humerous side of the character, and that the character is someone who enjoys to laugh.I have also included the implementation of a live Twitter feed related to my character on the about page however I am uncertain as to wether this constitutes an external dependency. The purpose of including the live Twitter feed is to show that the character is someone who is fairly active on social media and has a high social media presence.

External dependencies can dramatically transform the purpose and fcuntionality of a website in order to perform tasks such as present users with playlists, give users directions or even display geo data based upon people around the world discussing topics on Twitter, and whilst I see the great potential of these frameworks and dependencies, I feel that I lack the technical knowledge required to implement these features into my site.