Maximizing Engagement on Your Sports Blog with Hockey Highlights API
Tags: api, javascript, tutorial, webdev
Published: 2023-10-16 18:32:25

There are certain common problems that sport blog owners will often encounter:

- **Content Quality**: Maintaining consistently high-quality content can be a challenge. Bloggers might struggle with producing well-researched, insightful, and engaging articles.
- **Consistency**: Regular updates are essential to keep readers engaged. Many sports bloggers find it challenging to maintain a consistent posting schedule.
- **Content Originality**: Originality is crucial in a crowded niche like sports blogging. Plagiarism or recycling content can lead to credibility issues.
- **Engagement and Interactivity**: Sports blogs often benefit from reader engagement. Encouraging comments, discussions, and feedback can be challenging.
- **Time Management**: Running a sports blog can be time-consuming. Balancing it with other commitments can be a struggle.
- **Seasonality**: During off-seasons, when there are no games or major events, bloggers may struggle to find relevant topics to write about. This can lead to content gaps and periods of reduced activity, which can result in a loss of audience engagement.

Fortunately, there are already market-available solutions to help address the aforementioned problems. Such services often provide aggregated, relevant, and pre-written news. However, an even more effective approach is to write articles yourself and utilize a highlight aggregator instead of scouring the internet for quality content. Highlights are frequently found on platforms like YouTube, Twitter, ESPN, and others. Nevertheless, given the multitude of games being played, this process can become cumbersome rather quickly.

## The Winter is coming

Get ready because winter is right around the corner, and that can only mean one thing — Hockey is back in the spotlight. For blog owners, it’s the perfect time to generate compelling content using Hockey highlights. But to do that, you need a top-notch highlights aggregator with a rich variety of high-quality content. As both a developer and a blog owner, I found [Highlightly](https://highlightly.net/) as an excellent source.

To easily integrate the Hockey Highlights API, there are a few simple prerequisites you must fulfill:

**Step 1: Rapid API Account Setup**

You’ll need to create a Rapid API account, but don’t worry — it’s a quick, straightforward, and free process. Once you’re logged in, you’re well on your way to enhancing your sports blogs with dynamic hockey content.

**Step 2: Choose Your Tier**

The API offers a BASIC tier, and the best part is that it’s entirely free. With the BASIC tier, you’ll gain access to over 100 leagues, making it easy to start integrating clips into your projects. Just bear in mind that certain leagues, such as the NHL, are not part of the free tier. Once you’ve experimented a bit consider upgrading to the PRO tier. It’s a cost-effective option that provides coverage from hockey leagues all around the world.

**Step 3: Protect Your API Token**

Now, here’s a valuable tip. Treat your API TOKEN from Rapid API like you treat your credit card — keep it secure. Safeguard it by storing it on your server and, most importantly, make sure it’s never exposed to your clients. This precaution will grant you the control you need over your API access and keep your integration running as smoothly as butter.

With these essential steps in place, you’re all set to improve engagement on your sports blog and provide your readers with the exciting hockey content.

## Fetching relevant Hockey highlights

When it comes to creating blogs that feature Hockey highlights, having access to comprehensive documentation is absolutely crucial. The good news is that the API we’re using provides excellent documentation to support developers and bloggers in seamlessly integrating this feature into their projects. You can find the official documentation for the API right [here](https://highlightly.net/documentation/hockey/). If you’re not a developer, don’t worry; you can still query the API through the RapidAPI website. We’ll provide an example in the next section.

The API is, of course, language-agnostic. No matter your programming language of choice, you can effortlessly integrate it into your project. Instead of bombarding you with code snippets for various programming languages, I recommend a visit to the Rapid API testing page. There, you’ll discover ready-made code snippets for a wide array of languages, including C, C#, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, and more, easing the integration process. What’s more, you can even skip the programming language aspect and [query highlights on your own](https://rapidapi.com/highlightly-api-highlightly-api-default/api/hockey-highlights-api). This way, even non-developers can enhance their sports blog content.

![RapidAPI testing page where you can query data by hand.](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/4qef7izdngziif0sbntv.png)

The API offers a few routes, each designed for a specific purpose:

- **/countries** and **/countries/{countryCode}**: These routes provide valuable country-related data, crucial for adding context to your hockey highlights.

- **/teams** and **/teams/{team_id}**: Use these routes to access team-specific information, helping you paint a vivid picture of each squad.
- **/leagues** and **/leagues/{league_id}**: Delve into league routes to gain access to essential league-related data, refining your quest for the perfect highlights.
- **/matches** and **/matches/{match_id}**: These routes unveil match-specific details, allowing you to zero in on the highlights of a particular game.
- **/highlights** and **/highlights/{highlight_id}**: At the heart of the API, these routes work their magic. Here, you can unearth the actual highlights that will enrich your blog’s content.

Country, team, and league routes serve as utility routes primarily used to fetch matches and their associated highlights. However, it’s important to highlight that the API is intentionally designed to be user-friendly and straightforward, eliminating the need for complex IDs.

Let’s demonstrate how the API works with some simple vanilla Javascript. First, create a simple function that will trigger an HTTP request to retrieve highlights data:

```javascript
const axios = require("axios");

const fetchHockeyHighlightsData = async (queryParams) => {
  const options = {
    method: 'GET',
    url: 'https://hockey-highlights-api.p.rapidapi.com/highlights',
    params: queryParams,
    headers: {
      'X-RapidAPI-Key': '<API TOKEN>',
      'X-RapidAPI-Host': 'hockey-highlights-api.p.rapidapi.com'
    }
  };

  try {
    const response = await axios.request(options);
    console.log(response.data);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
  }
};
```

Remember to replace <API TOKEN> with your own Rapid API key, which you receive upon subscribing to any tier of the API. With this function in your toolkit, you can fetch data in a variety of ways. For instance:

```javascript
fetchHockeyHighlightsData({
  timezone: 'Europe/London',
  date: '2023-10-15'
});
```

The above function call would result in the following data:

![Hockey highlights queried data for 2023–10–15](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/k9r8lke1bgsghmnhs0ig.png)

It’s essential to note that the API supports a wide range of query parameters, not just the date parameter as demonstrated in the example. Another key point to remember is that responses are paginated. If the total count exceeds the limit, you can increase the offset to retrieve the next batch of highlights.

While I could continue to demonstrate various ways to query highlights using league, country, and team query parameters, I suggest taking a look at the APIs official [docs](https://highlightly.net/documentation/hockey/) or the RapidAPI testing page.

![Example query parameters from the official docs for the highlights route.](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/j937vb9tzo18re8ih66w.png)

## Conclusion: Maximizing Engagement with Highlights

Sport blog owners are continuously met with challenging hurdles, from managing their time and maintaining content quality to ensuring consistency, all while contending with the ups and downs of sports seasons. While news aggregation services may seem like a convenient option, they often come at the cost of lower user engagement.

In this article, I presented a solution that helps maximizing user engagement: integrating and querying Hockey highlights. The Highlightly Hockey API offers a Basic tier, which is entirely free and provides access to over 100 leagues. For those seeking unlimited access to highlights from all leagues, including the NHL, I highly recommend upgrading to the PRO tier, a remarkably cost-effective and budget-friendly option.

Wishing you the best of luck on your journey in the world of sports blogging.