Nowadays, it is quite possible to reach global news on the internet. Websites such as Google News and Microsoft MSN provide their users with news from thousands of sources around the world through a single platform. They also support more than one language country. There are many REST APIs available from the market that provide developers with multiple news source data. One of them is the mediastack live and historical news API.
APIs that provide live and historic news articles enable developers and businesses to obtain last-minute and historical data from multiple sources with a single HTTP request. In this article, we will introduce mediastack API, which is the most popular news REST API today. Then we will explain how we can integrate the historical news endpoint, which is an endpoint of the mediastack API, into the Node.js programming language.
Table of Contents
What Is the mediastack API?
The mediastack offers the best news REST API that developers and businesses use today. This API supports over 7500 sources and 50 countries.
The unique data provided by this API is widely used today in news, machine learning, and NLP (natural language processing) applications. The mediastack API is scalable. Developers can create automated processes with this API.
Take a look at how you can use the mediastack API with React.js.
This API has two main endpoints, live and historical news. Moreover, the historical news endpoint has a very large historical archive. Developers can obtain historical news from thousands of sources with a single HTTP request by specifying a certain date range.
Creating a Historical News Application
In this section, we will integrate the historical news endpoint of the mediastack API into the Node.js programming language. Firstly, we need to gain access to the mediastack API to perform an integration. For this, we will sign up for one of the affordable subscription plans offered by the mediastack.
Then, after obtaining our API key on the dashboard page that opens, we can start developing our application. For this, let’s open a terminal in the file path where we will develop the application and create the Node.js project by running the command with the following default settings.
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npm init |
After installing our Node.js application with the default setting, we will open a file named ‘index.js’ in the application directory. Then we will install the libraries that we will use in the application with the following command.
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npm i express request |
After adding the necessary libraries to our project, we can now write code. Let’s add the following code to the ‘index.js’ file.
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const express = require('express'); const app = express(); let request = require('request'); let apiKey = 'YOUR-API-KEY'; const port = 5000; app.get('/api/historical-news', (req, res) => { let url = `https://api.mediastack.com/v1/news?access_key=${apiKey}&date=2020-07-17`; request(url, function (err, response, body) { if(err){ console.log('error:', error); } else { console.log('body:', body); res.json(body); } }) }) app.listen(port, () => { console.log(`Running at http://localhost:${port}`); }); |
After running the application, let’s send an HTTP GET request from the URL below to the API we developed.
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http://localhost:5000/api/historical-news |
Some of the historical news we obtained from the mediastack API as a result of HTTP GET request is as follows.
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{ "pagination": { "limit": 100, "offset": 0, "count": 100, "total": 293 }, "data": [ { "author": "CNN Staff", "title": "This may be the big winner of the market crash", "description": "This may be the big winner of the market crash", "url": "http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_topstories/~3/KwE80_jkKo8/a-sa-dd-3", "source": "CNN", "image": "https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150325082152-social-gfx-cnn-logo-super-169.jpg", "category": "general", "language": "en", "country": "us", "published_at": "2020-07-17T23:35:06+00:00" }, [...] ] } |
Conclusion
In summary, news data is used in many projects today. Although the number of APIs providing news data is increasing, one of the most important features that distinguish these APIs from each other is the provision of historical news data. Today, only a few comprehensive news APIs provide historical news to their users. In this article, we have seen how we can integrate and use a very popular news API that provides historical news data in a project in just a few steps.
FAQs
Q: What Are the Available Endpoints of the mediastack API?
A: There are three different available endpoints that The mediastack API offers to its users. The first of these is the live news endpoint, which provides a live news article. The other one is the historical news endpoint that provides historical news data and the last one is the news sources endpoint.
Q: Is the mediastack Historical News API Free?
A: Yes, it is. The mediastack API has multiple subscription plans. One of these plans is the free plan. This API offers its users the opportunity to use up to 500 requests per month with the free plan. No credit card is required to use the free plan, but an API key must be obtained.
Q: In Which Programming Languages Can I Integrate the mediastack Historical News API?
A: The mediastack API can be integrated into all current programming languages. The extensive documentation provided by this API includes sample integration codes for PHP, Python, Go, and many more programming languages.
Q: How Many Global Sources Does the mediastack Historical News API Support?
A: The mediastack API offers its users a wide range of news sources. It supports over 7,500 worldwide news sources and 50 countries. Supports popular news sources like CNN, NY TIMES, and ABC News. Additionally, it also provides its users with many news sources that provide category-based services such as stock market news and financial news.
