Category: Developer Setup / Data Automation Difficulty: Medium-Advanced Setup time: 30-45 minutes Last tested: January 2025
I wanted to get a lot of specific data from a specific city. My goal was simple: map the total number of cafes in one city - with names, addresses, price range, Instagram pages, everything.
What I tried first:
I went to AI chats to get this information:
What happened:
The output was limited. Maybe 100 names with addresses. That's it. I even tried giving a CSV as input as an example of what I wanted as output. But I didn't get the data I was looking for.
The AI models could give me some results, but not the complete picture. Not thousands of cafes. Not all the details I needed.
Then I got introduced to the concept of API.
The restaurant analogy (how I understood it):
You are a customer sitting at a table in a restaurant. There's a chef in the kitchen waiting for you. The only way for you two to communicate is through a waiter.