1. Pearson Plug & Play
@PearsonAPI

2. Pearson, the world's leading learning company,
and includes…
3

3. What is Pearson Plug & Play
Pearson Plug & Play is exploring the potential of an ‘open data’
approach to Pearson’s content, creating data feeds (APIs) and
a developer ecosystem.
20+ Data Sets explored
Goals of the project are to
increase innovation, reach
customer satisfaction, and sales.
In support, the Plug & Play team
worked with Pearson business units
to identify initial data to release,
make the data available, and
establish underlying infrastructure.
4

4. What API’s are available today?
DK’s Eyewitness London Travel Guide of best
hotels, restaurants, bars and shops in London
FT Press’ titles on business,
marketing and science from
award winning authors
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English, 230,000+ words plus examples
and pronunciations in video and pictures

5. Pearson Developer Website
Browse the site. Apply for a production
API key for your
All the Pearson APIs
application…
currently available are in
Explore/the APIs tab. This …using the application
where you’ll find all the form behind the API
documentation and Key Get started
methods for each API, the
terms & conditions, prices,
You select the APIs you
etc.
wish to use along with
the price plan. Once the
Pearson API team has
have approved your
production API key,
you’re good to go.
Register
To register, just provide your Take part in the
name and email address. Pearson Developers
You’ll automatically get a free Community by asking
sandbox API key, with which your questions and
you can play with the APIs in sharing your findings on
the test tab and report bugs. the APIs in the Forums,
or using the contact
form

6. Why work with Pearson APIs?
High quality, curated content from recognisable brands
Pearson datasets can be used for free
Sandbox key gives you access to all the APIs
Unique content from one of the first publishers of its size &
diverse reach to provide open access via APIs
RESTful APIs (JSON, XML, HTML) built for the web

7. ShowMe London
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12. Brand
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16. Thank you
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18. London
New York
Dubai
Singapore
Buenos Aires
Hub Offices
Sydney
Development
Melbourne
Client Services
Winner Digital Publishing Solution - iAwards 2011 Winner for Digital Publishing - PANPA Award 2010
Winner Innovation in Content Delivery - ACCOM Awards 2011 Finalist, Telstra Business Awards, 2011, 2010
Winner Best Mobile Product and Best Marketing - AIMIA 2011 Deloitte Technology Fast 50: 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010
Winner Outstanding Export Achievement - ATS Award 2010 Winner D&AD Yellow Pencil, Mobile Marketing 2009

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26. Email me at charlie.bt@tigerspike.com Tweet me @lepapa

27. API Documentation
Behind the APIs/Explore tab
For each API on sale on the website, you'll
find:
• A overview of the dataset underlying
the API
• Description and documentation on
each of the API methods
• An access to the Sandbox APIs to test
the Pearson APIs using your free
sandbox key.
The sandbox APIs available in the test
areas in APIs are the same as the full
production APIs, but the underlying data
is only a subset of the full production
data.
For example, the sandbox Longman
Dictionary API displays letters A to C,
but the full production Longman
Dictionary API goes to letter Z
• A Report a Bug function (we know
we’re not perfect)

28. Using the API Explorer

29. Calling an API using jQuery
var apiKey = '27***************************73';
var searchUrl= 'https://api.pearson.com/longman/dictionary/0.1/entry.json’;
function doSearch(searchFor){
var data = 'apikey=' + apiKey + '&q=' + searchFor
$.ajax({
type: 'GET',
url: searchUrl,
data: data,
dataType: 'jsonp',
jsonp: 'jsonp',
success: function(data){
handleResponse(data);
},
error: function(req, err, text ) {
debugLog.append('Error: ' + status + '(' + text +')<br/>');
}
});
}

30. Don’t leave your keys under the flowerpot !
• Keys are valuable
• They provide access to a service
• They are monitored and rate limited
• If someone gets hold of your key
• You may find they use up your quota
• They may use it inappropriately
• Keep them safe, don’t put them in/on the client
• Adopt a proxy approach
• Best practice anyway (potential caching advantage)

31. Questions ?