This is an API to get information about dinosaurs. The API was created using the Laravel framework.

If you would like to contribute you can get started with this project by following these instructions:

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/GeorgeBetts/Dinosaur-API.git

2. Copy the ENV file and generate a key

cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

3. Install NPM & Composer packages

npm install
composer install

4. Run database migrations and seeder

php artisan migrate
php artisan db:seed

The API follows standard REST resource structure. The resoures available in the API are:

• Dinosaur

To interact with these resources the following endpoints are available:

• GET /resource
• GET /resource/{id}

E.g. to retrieve a list of Dinosaurs

http://localhost/api/dinosaurs

You can also filter the Dinosaurs resource using the following parameters:

For example, to retrieve a list of dinosaurs where their name contains 'Stego', that have a wikipedia article and at least one image, you would use the following parameters:

http://localhost/api/dinosaurs?name=Stego&has_wikipedia_entry=true&has_image=true

To retrieve dinosaurs that match the exact name 'Stegosaurus':

http://localhost/api/dinosaurs?name=Stegosaurus&exact_match=true

You can also retrieve the Stegosaurus by using it's id:

http://localhost/api/dinosaurs/6467

The data for this API is taken from WikiData and is imported to a database via the DinosaurTableSeeder, this reads in the raw JSON data from Wikidata which is saved in the project at database/data/wikidata_dinosaurs.json
The SPARQL query for Wikidata is as follows:

    SELECT ?dinosaur ?dinosaurLabel ?taxon ?image ?startTime ?endTime ?gallery ?sizeComparison ?encyclopedia ?article
    WHERE
    {
      ?dinosaur wdt:P31 wd:Q23038290;
                wdt:P18 ?image.
      MINUS {
        ?dinosaur wdt:p171 wdt:Q171283.  
      }
      OPTIONAL { ?dinosaur wdt:P225 ?taxon. }
      OPTIONAL { ?dinosaur wdt:P580 ?startTime. }
      OPTIONAL { ?dinosaur wdt:P582 ?endTime. }
      OPTIONAL { ?dinosaur wdt:P8512 ?sizeComparison. }
      OPTIONAL { ?dinosaur wdt:P1417 ?encyclopedia. }
      OPTIONAL {
          ?article schema:about ?dinosaur .
          ?article schema:inLanguage "en" .
          ?article schema:isPartOf <https://en.wikipedia.org/> .
      }
      ?dinosaur rdfs:label ?dinosaurLabel filter (lang(?dinosaurLabel) = "en") .
    }