Portfolio API + GitHub Pages

📅️ Published: May 22, 2019 • 🕣 4 min read

This blog was originally posted on dev.to

Portfolio API + GitHub Pages = 🔥

So I accidentally figured out that we can return JSON response instead of the standard HTML when we access a GitHub Pages site.

I really liked the business card concept by Tierney Cyren See the post here

So I thought instead of creating a user card why not do some dev fun 😉 and create a REST API about me.

For example, if you do

curl bhupeshv.me/api/

Gives the following result on the terminal

{
    "Name 😎":"Bhupesh Varshney",
    "Bio 🤗":"OpenSource Lover, Blogger & CodePervert",
    "Website 🖱":"https://bhupeshv.me/",
    "Github 💻":"https://github.com/Bhupesh-V",
    "DEV 🦄":"https://dev.to/bhupesh",
    "Twitter 🐦":"https://twitter.com/codepervert",
    "LinkedIn 📎":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhupesh-v/",
    "blogs":{
        "blog8":{
            "name":"Making a Simple REST API Using Django REST Framework",
            "link":"https://bhupeshv.me/simple-api-using-drf/"
        },
        "blog7":{
            "name":"Internet for Developers",
            "link":"https://bhupeshv.me/internet-for-devs/"
        },
        "blog6":{
            "name":"Portfolio API + GitHub Pages",
            "link":"https://bhupeshv.me/Portfolio-API+GitHub-Pages/"
        },
        "blog5":{
            "name":"30 Seconds of C++",
            "link":"https://bhupeshv.me/30-Seconds-of-C++/"
        },
        "blog4":{
            "name":"A Simple Scheduler in Python",
            "link":"https://bhupeshv.me/A-Simple-Scheduler-in-Python/"
        },
        "blog3":{
            "name":"Exceptions in C++",
            "link":"https://bhupeshv.me/Exceptions-in-C++/"
        },
        "blog2":{
            "name":"pipreqs - Automatically generate python dependencies",
            "link":"https://bhupeshv.me/pipreqs/"
        },
        "blog1":{
            "name":"My dev life has just started 😎👩‍💻",
            "link":"https://bhupeshv.me/My-dev-life-has-just-started/"
        }
    }
}

You can also test it on apitester and see that it indeed returns a JSON response, behaving like a normal REST API. Here is another demo using HTTPie. Do

http GET bhupeshv.me/api/

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Age: 0
Cache-Control: max-age=600
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 1267
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Date: Tue, 21 May 2019 06:37:05 GMT
ETag: "5ce3999b-4f3"
Expires: Tue, 21 May 2019 06:35:10 GMT
Last-Modified: Tue, 21 May 2019 06:24:27 GMT
Server: GitHub.com
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Via: 1.1 varnish
X-Cache: MISS
X-Cache-Hits: 0
X-Fastly-Request-ID: e19833ea471f930d8ef9cfb2574ab539530b7df7
X-GitHub-Request-Id: C806:4F97:95A48F:C36F69:5CE399C6
X-Served-By: cache-bom18223-BOM
X-Timer: S1558420625.037150,VS0,VE256

{
    "Bio 🤗": "OpenSource Lover, Blogger & CodePervert",
    "DEV 🦄": "https://dev.to/bhupesh",
    "Github 💻": "https://github.com/Bhupesh-V",
    "LinkedIn 📎": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhupesh-v/",
    "Name 😎": "Bhupesh Varshney",
    "Twitter 🐦": "https://twitter.com/codepervert",
    "Website 🖱": "https://bhupeshv.me/",
    "blogs": {
        "blog1": {
            "link": "https://bhupeshv.me/My-dev-life-has-just-started/",
            "name": "My dev life has just started 😎👩‍💻"
        },
        "blog2": {
            "link": "https://bhupeshv.me/pipreqs/",
            "name": "pipreqs - Automatically generate python dependencies"
        },
        "blog3": {
            "link": "https://bhupeshv.me/Exceptions-in-C++/",
            "name": "Exceptions in C++"
        },
        "blog4": {
            "link": "https://bhupeshv.me/A-Simple-Scheduler-in-Python/",
            "name": "A Simple Scheduler in Python"
        },
        "blog5": {
            "link": "https://bhupeshv.me/30-Seconds-of-C++/",
            "name": "30 Seconds of C++"
        },
        "blog6":{
            "name":"Portfolio API + GitHub Pages",
            "link":"https://bhupeshv.me/Portfolio-API+GitHub-Pages/"
        },
        "blog7":{
            "name":"Internet for Developers",
            "link":"https://bhupeshv.me/internet-for-devs/"
        },
        "blog8":{
            "name":"Making a Simple REST API Using Django REST Framework",
            "link":"https://bhupeshv.me/simple-api-using-drf/"
        },
    }
}

Tell me how ?

Here is how you create a fun static API for your portfolio on GitHub Pages:

Select the route, you want the users to send a GET request. For example you could choose https://yourdomain.com/about/ Or any other route according to your choice.
Make sure you add a custom domain on GitHub Pages, because sending a request to https.username.github.io sounds a bit 🤷🏾‍♂️.
Now go & make a directory with the same name about and inside it create a new file named index.json.

Add the following contents in the JSON file.

{
"Name 😎": " ",
"Bio 🤗": " ",
"Website 🖱": " ",
"GitHub 💻": " ",
"DEV 🦄": " ",
"Twitter 🐦": " ",
"LinkedIn 📎": " "
}

Fill in the details as required or create new fields.
Push your changes and test it.
Hurray !! You got your first static API ready. Now go and ask your dev friends to do a curl on you 😁

Note: Do not place any other files in the same directory as the one in which your index.json file resides. For example, if you place a README.md or index.html that will get served instead of the JSON file.

Downsides

Not able to access parameters through URL ?blogs=blog1.
Only GET method works.
Data is static.

Do share once you make one for yourself 😋 or just say how did you like the post below :)