PetFinder API - US only?

API used in the book, Petfinder, seems to be useful for US devs only, not useful for the rest of the world. Please suggest the alternative API or some walk-around as registration for the key and testing the app in the current state is not developer friendly.

@hococoder @iaaqibhussain Suggestions?

Hi @horb ,

Thank you for your feedback. It’s really important to us to hear back from you and improve our content.

This has been addressed at the other thread of this forum, but I think it’s relevant to address it in here too.

I’m sorry you feel this is not developer friendly, but I can assure you working with Petfinder’s API is easy and simple.

This API was chosen to help you learn core concepts of app develoment that are taught throughout the book. It was also chosen because it’s very easy to get a key and open to anyone that wants to develop an app with it.

I realize that you need to create an account and it requires you to provide an US address. You can simply use any US address as this does not affect your requests to the API.

While the API only shows pets in the US, it still presents a real-world scenario you may face as a developer; working on an app that does not work in your region. I live in Brazil, and I had to work on apps that not only didn’t work in my state (and are location-based) but also didn’t work in my country.

This is a situation that happens and Apple has tools that help you overcome this. Location data is only “required” after chapter 12 and you can either hard code a US location or use Xcode’s tools to simulate your location. The main point of chapter 12 was teaching core concepts to readers about user privacy and how to handle this kind of data in their apps.

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