Philosophers API is the public API that powers the Philosophers iOS app. Through the API you can get a host of information about famous philosophers, famous quotes, public domain ebooks, key ideas, and even AR assets.

In addition to the REST API discussed below Philosophers API has a graphQL interface that allows you to query the data in a more powerful way. Use the graphQL playground to explore the data and query it.

The API is comprised of five top-level objects: Philosopher, Quote, Category, Key Idea, and AR Object. It's perhaps apt to start with Philosophers.

Sample Philosopher:

{
    "birthDate": "21 June 1905",
    "birthYear": "1905 AD",
    "deathDate": "15 April 1980",
    "deathYear": "1980 AD",
    "hasEBooks": true,
    "id": "5C4140C8-E55F-42D3-A1A6-952D31F524F9",
    "iepLink": "https://www.iep.utm.edu/sartre-ex/",
    "images": { ... },
    "interests": "Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Literature, Political Philosophy, Ontology",
    "libriVoxGetRequestLinks": [],
    "libriVoxIDs": [],
    "life": "(1905-1980)",
    "name": "Jean-Paul Sartre",
    "school": "Existentialism",
    "speLink": "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/",
    "username": "@nauseous",
    "wikiTitle": "Jean-Paul Sartre"
}

All endpoint responses include a set of paths for various images of a given philosopher.

Sample Images:

...
"images": {
    "faceImages": {
        "face250x250": "/Images/Jeremy-BenthamFace.jpg",
        "face500x500": "/Images/Jeremy-BenthamFace@2x.jpg",
        "face750x750": "/Images/Jeremy-BenthamFace@3x.jpg"
    },
    "fullImages": {
        "full1200x1600": "/Images/Jeremy-BenthamFull@2x.jpg",
        "full1260x1680": "/Images/Jeremy-BenthamFull-iPhone@3x.jpg",
        "full420x560": "/Images/Jeremy-BenthamFull-iPhone.jpg",
        "full600x800": "/Images/Jeremy-BenthamFull.jpg",
        "full840x1120": "/Images/Jeremy-BenthamFull-iPhone@2x.jpg"
    },
    "illustrations": {
        "ill250x250": "/Images/Jeremy-Bentham-Ill.png",
        "ill500x500": "/Images/Jeremy-Bentham-Ill@2x.png",
        "ill750x750": "/Images/Jeremy-Bentham-Ill@3x.png"
    },
    "thumbnailIllustrations": {
        "thumbnailIll100x100": "/Images/Jeremy-Bentham-Ill-small@2x.png",
        "thumbnailIll150x150": "/Images/Jeremy-Bentham-Ill-small@3x.png",
        "thumbnailIll50x50": "/Images/Jeremy-Bentham-Ill-small.png"
    }
}
...

Where illustrations and thumbnailIllustrations are flat-style avatar drawings. And faceImages and fullImages are photographs or artistic works depicting the philosopher. For example, https://philosophersapi.com/Images/Jeremy-BenthamFace@2x.jpg is a 500px by 500px image of Jeremy Bentham cropped to his face.

Book Covers:

Ebooks come with original cover art made for Philosophers. In each book's formats, image/jpeg is the full-size cover (1792px by 2688px) and thumbnail is a 600px-wide copy for lists. In the graphQL interface these are the image and thumbnail fields of formats. Covers are still being added, so books without one yet leave both out.

Sample Ebook:

...
"ebooks": [
    {
        "authors": [
            {
                "birthYear": -428,
                "deathYear": -348,
                "name": "Plato"
            }
        ],
        "formats": {
            "application/epub+zip": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1497.epub.images",
            "image/jpeg": "https://philosophersapi.com/Images/Gutenberg/1497.jpg",
            "text/plain": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1497.txt.utf-8",
            "thumbnail": "https://philosophersapi.com/Images/Gutenberg/Thumbnails/600/1497.jpg",
            ...
        },
        "id": 1497,
        "title": "The Republic",
        ...
    },
    ...
],
"librivoxAudiobooks": [
    {
        "coverArtPath": "/Images/LibriVox/2707.jpg",
        "getRequestURL": "https://librivox.org/api/feed/audiobooks/?id=2707&extended=1&format=json",
        "id": "2707"
    },
    ...
]
...

Thumbnails are also available 200px and 400px wide, at /Images/Gutenberg/Thumbnails/<# width #>/<# book id #>.jpg. For example, https://philosophersapi.com/Images/Gutenberg/Thumbnails/400/1497.jpg is a 400px-wide cover for Plato's Republic. LibriVox audiobook covers are at /Images/LibriVox/<# audiobook id #>.jpg, the coverArtPath of each of the ebook endpoint's librivoxAudiobooks.

Sample Philosopher Details:

{
    "hasEBooks": true,
    "iepLink": "https://www.iep.utm.edu/plato/",
    "life": "(c.427-c.347 BCE)",
    ...
}