Building a Desk API with The Product API: A Complete Guide

Introduction to Desks

Desks are essential furniture pieces for workspaces, home offices, and study areas, providing a dedicated surface for work, study, and organization. From ergonomic office desks for productivity to compact writing desks for small spaces, finding the right desk with the right specifications is crucial for creating an effective workspace. Whether you're furnishing a home office, setting up a corporate workspace, or building a furniture marketplace, having structured desk product data is essential.

Imagine being able to search for desks and instantly get detailed information about each piece - from material to type. This is exactly what a specialized Desk Product API can provide.

What Makes a Desk API Special?

A Desk Product API goes beyond basic product listings. It understands the unique characteristics that matter to desk buyers:

• Material: The primary construction material - wood, metal, glass, or composite
• Type: The style and intended use - office, writing, computer, or standing

With this structured data, you can build powerful features like filtering by material, comparing desk types, or recommending desks based on workspace needs.

Try It Out: Search for Desks

Use the search bar below to search for desks. Try queries like "wooden office desk", "standing desk metal", or "glass computer desk". The results will include detailed specifications automatically extracted from product information across the web.

How It Works: Technical Implementation

Now that you've seen the API in action, let's dive into how it's implemented. This specialized Desk API is built on top of The Product API which is an AI-based product search API that works with any product and any type of query. It responds with structured JSON and supports custom structured responses, allowing you to build specialized APIs for any product category.

The Product API's powerful custom_data_schema feature allows you to define additional structured fields specific to your product category, enabling you to create category-specific APIs like this Desk API. For more details on how the API works, see the full documentation.

Understanding APIs for Product Data

An API (Application Programming Interface) enables different software applications to communicate. For product data:

• Input: You send a search query (e.g., "desk wooden office")
• Processing: The API searches across multiple sources and uses AI to extract relevant information
• Output: You receive structured product data in JSON format

The flexibility of a product API means you can customize it for specific categories by defining additional data fields through JSON Schema.

Creating a Desk-Specific JSON Schema to pass as custom_data_schema of search request

Here's the JSON Schema we use for desk products:

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "material": {
      "type": "string",
      "enum": ["wood", "metal", "glass", "composite"],
      "description": "Desk material"
    },
    "type": {
      "type": "string",
      "enum": ["office", "writing", "computer", "standing"],
      "description": "Desk type or style"
    }
  },
  "required": ["type"]
}
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Using the Category Prefix

When searching for desks, we prefix the search query with "desk" to help the AI understand the context and return more relevant results.

Example Search Queries:

• desk wooden office
• desk standing metal
• desk glass computer
• desk composite writing

The prefix "desk" ensures the API understands you're looking specifically for desks and not other products.

Complete Example: Making a Request

Here's how to make a request to The Product API with a desk-specific schema. For complete API reference including authentication, endpoints, and all parameters, see the documentation:

const response = await fetch('https://api.example.com/api?search=desk%20wooden%20office&with_image=true', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_API_KEY'
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    custom_data_schema: {
      type: "object",
      properties: {
        material: {
          type: "string",
          enum: ["wood", "metal", "glass", "composite"],
          description: "Desk material"
        },
        type: {
          type: "string",
          enum: ["office", "writing", "computer", "standing"],
          description: "Desk type or style"
        }
      },
      required: ["type"]
    }
  })
});

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.products);
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Expected Response

The API will return products with standard fields plus your custom custom_data field:

{
  "status": "success",
  "products": [
    {
      "name": "Modern Wooden Office Desk",
      "description": "A spacious wooden office desk perfect for productivity...",
      "brand": "Furniture Co",
      "image": "https://example.com/image.jpg",
      "custom_data": {
        "material": "wood",
        "type": "office"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Conclusion

By combining the flexible Product API with a desk-specific JSON Schema, you can create a powerful, specialized API for desk products. The key is:

1. Define your schema based on what desk data matters to your application
2. Use category prefixes in search queries for better context
3. Leverage the custom_data field to build rich, category-specific features

The same approach works for any product category - you just need to define the right schema for your needs!

Ready to get started? Create your own product API on The Product API and start building your own category-specific APIs today!

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Ready to build your own category-specific API? Check out our other API preset guides for chairs, tables, chainsaws, and more!