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I am struggling a little bit with the Stack Exchange API since there seems to be no formal specification for the individual endpoints of the API.

Example:

Endpoint: https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/questions/add

Documentation Link: https://api.stackexchange.com/docs/create-question

On the screenshot you can see all the information I get for the endpoint. A few things weren't clear at first sight:

  1. Is this a POST request or would GET also work?
  2. What is the Content-Type (x-www-form-urlencoded or json ?)
  3. Which fields are required which are optional
  4. Description of all the fields:
    • What is preview for. What is the format: [true,false], ["true","false"], [0,1]?
    • How to format the list of tags?
    • What is the key, where to get it
    • How do responses look like (e.g. HTTP headers)
    • How would an example request look like

I did find out all of this information eventually but I had to make assumptions and do quite a bit of trial and error.

In contrast, the GitHub API for example has a different structure and provides most of the data at a glance. Example: Create an GitHub Issue

Screenshot

screenshot

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    I know, right? I've already reported the POST/GET issue, but the rest of it's pretty bad too. Commented Mar 4, 2014 at 1:04
  • I just spent hours trying to figure out why I get a 400 status code. The problem was that the preview seems to be required.... Commented Mar 6, 2014 at 22:25

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