JustGiving APIs

Charity hack 2011

David Whitney, Developer, JustGiving.@jghackers@david_whitney (views are my own)

We’re from JustGiving and we’ve got some APIsWho are you guys?

We’re the biggest fundraising website in the UK

We enable charities and fundraisers to collect money online

Yup, we’re massive.

10,000 + charities

Very close to

£1 billionRaised via JG

4 Million hits per month

15 Million JustGiving

account holders

So, who am I?

I’m David, a developer from JustGiving. I work on the APIs with a few of the developers here.

You can blame me if they suck

Or be nice when they don’t ;)

We want to share something, we think is pretty special with you guysBut, first… for those of you that are first time attendees of the charity hack.

A briefhistory Of JustGiving APIs

2009

We bought you this weird SOAP thing to the charity

hack

It wasn’t very good, and we canned it!

Which is why we didn’t actually release it

2010

We improved.

We bought you a developer preview of a

Rest (ish) JG API.

The API went live not long after and CRUK

have since integrated it!

2011It’s the birthday of our

2010 effort......

So what’s new

•Json/P as supported, and preferred, formats!•Event creation!•More fundraising data!•Better examples!•Better documentation!•Faster!•More magic unicorns!

We listened to what you asked for in 2010....

And added a few extra bits.....

A few API stats

- ~400 API Accounts- 850,000 hits/month on the API- At peak ~1,500,000 a month- Just shy of 7 million hits this year

For the next 24 hours, some more toys...•C# SDK•PHP SDK•Code Samples on GitHub•Live documentation•Google Groups•@jghackers•All open source•LIVE bug fixing as we go•Help, whenever you need it.

Most people...

Create & validate JustGiving accounts

Create & retrieve fundraising pages

Funnel donations to charity using the JustGiving SDI*

*Simple Donation Integration... No! not an STI ;)

Simple Donation Integration

The obvious question that people ask is “Who cares! Can I donate using the API!”

•Simple Donation Integration is a redirect based integration technique

•Allows you to send users to JustGiving to make a donation

•Users are returned to your site afterwards with some query string magic

•You then use the API to verify the donation

•Really really simple.

You can obviously do other stuff

We’ve got API access to quite a lot of our data now, and we’re aiming for more coverage over time

•Account data, creation and management•Charity data•Donation data•Event data and creation (new!)•Fundraising page data, creation and management•Charity search•Team data, creation and management

It really is easy, lets make a page…

How about a donation…

Steps removed and sequence shortened

Prize

The best app that uses the JustGiving API

Will win....

£500 for the team

£500 quid for your teams favourite charity.

Some examples

• British Forces Foundation mobile app

• Triangularpixels.net Tectonicus

• Race For Life

• Virtual Baristas for Meningitis Trust

• Platt’s Bar

British Forces Foundation mobile app

• Uses SDI from an iPhone / Android app to drive donations• Extra points for use of SDI and our mobile site• Really shines with PayPal mobile express checkout

Triangularpixels.net Tectonicus

• A Minecraft map generator• Accepts charitable donations as payment for the free software• Donors get supporter icons in their maps

CRUK - Race For Life

• Run a small event every year that raises a bit of money• Race2011 saw huge increases in page creation through integration• Uses account and page APIs extensively

Virtual Baristas for Meningitis Trust

• Cool concept that implements donations via Twitter

Platt’s Bar

• Another fun implementation of SDI to encourage donations

The Future!

• Reducing friction! Friction sucks!

• We’re starting to look towards a V2 of the API

• Incremental update to fix some inconsistencies, removing the suck

• V1 supported indefinitely

• Built on the same tech, just capable of much more

• Pure REST, OAuth, more consistent Verb usage, better key management

• Data APIs in testing as we speak targeting CRM integrations and reporting

• Might even address the elephant in the room…

WHAT WILL YOU DO ;-)

Here’s a sunset for inspiration.And a double rainbow.

Thank you

For all your help, feedback and suggestion over the years. We hope to hear lots more!

Important Information

GitHub repository with open source SDKs

https://github.com/JustGiving/JustGiving.Api.Sdk

Sign up for an API account and create API keys

http://apimanagement.justgiving.com

Documentation and usage information

https://api.justgiving.com/docs

Developer portal

http://www.justgiving.com/developer

Simple Donation Integration guide

http://www.justgiving.com/developer/simple-donation-integration

Some hack-tastic examples in a few languages

https://github.com/JustGiving/JustGiving.Api.Sdk/wiki