AdoptAPet vs Dog Facts

AdoptAPet's free Pet List API lets a registered shelter or rescue pull its own current adoptable-pet listings — name, photo, breed, and a link back to the pet's page — for display on its own website; it doesn't cover other shelters' animals or expose network-wide search. Access needs a per-shelter API key passed as a key query parameter to endpoints like api.adoptapet.com/search/pets_at_shelter, confirmed live by a real GET that returns a JSON invalid_key error rather than a redirect or outage, with a separate OPTIONS preflight and that same GET both echoing access-control-allow-origin: * back for a test Origin header. The official documentation page now sits behind a shelter-account login (a live probe returns 401 with a Basic-auth challenge, a change from when it was openly readable), but the API endpoint itself remains fully live and free, returning JSON or XML depending on the output parameter.

This project ("Dog API by kinduff") started in 2016 as a small Sinatra service at dog-api.kinduff.com; that original endpoint is now broken — it responds but always returns an empty fact list — and has been superseded by a rebuilt V2 API at dogapi.dog, which is what backs this entry now. The live JSON:API-formatted /api/v2/facts endpoint returns one or more random dog facts with no signup or key required. It also documents over 340 dog breeds and 20 breed groups; the maintainer funds hosting through voluntary Buy Me a Coffee donations rather than a paid tier.