Build a custom API and an app to consume it

Sponsored by Postman — What could you create if you had 30 minutes to plan and 4 hours to build? Teams Abbey Perini and Alex Riviere, Michael Liendo and Will Johnson, and Brittany Ellich and Dave Schwantes took on the Web Dev Challenge to find out.

The Challenge

Build a custom API — and an app that consumes it — that makes something in your life a little more convenient.

Not every app needs to be the Next Big Thing. Sometimes you have a specific problem, challenge, or even just a pet peeve that can be solved with software. And these days, building an app that’s just for personal use is faster than ever.

For this challenge, your team needs to create a custom API that uses at least one third-party source and extends it in some way. You’ll also need to build a web app that interacts with your API. The end result should be a system that adds convenience to your life.

This could be something larger and practical, like automating something tedious you have to do over and over again (e.g. turn important incoming emails into calendar invites and/or Discord notifications), or it could be something fun and silly (e.g. use data from your wearable fitness device to calculate how many mini Snickers bars you’ve earned today).

The Tool

Apps must use Postman as part of the build.

Postman is the most popular tool out there for working with APIs. This challenge is all about collaboration, so you’re going to be using the mock server feature primarily, which will allow you to design your API surface together, then divide the work of building the API itself and building the app that consumes that API with confidence that they’ll fit together perfectly once they’re both ready.

While not required, Postman also has additional features and tools that might prove useful in the challenge:

• The Public API Network — this is a huge collection of public APIs that you can use as part of your build
• AI Protocol — if you’re thinking of adding an LLM into your build, this handy tool will let you test your user input and system prompts on different models without having to wire up all the code for it first — you only need your API key