Sometimes you need Lorem Ipsum, and sometimes you need it in json format via an API call. If you don’t mind bacon references spattered throughout that latin, then Bacon Ipsum can help.
I’ve already written an article about the need to make an API call before that service is ready. And myjson.com is a perfect tool for that. But if you just need a lot of text and want to generate it via an API, then Bacon Ipsum is a fun tool that can solve that problem.
The overall concept is a bit silly. I mean, lorem ipsum is kind of silly, and having words like “bacon”, “flank” and “shankle” sprinkled throughout borders on nonsense. But their API works well and is very easy to use. So, if you are in the middle of a dev project and need some dummy text in JSON format, it’s nifty stuff.
Json API
The landing page allows you to generate some Bacon Ipsum on the fly, but if you want the API calls, then go to baconipsum.com/json-api. There you’ve got very simple instructions on how to get your Bacon using simple query string parameters. These parameters allows you to control how many words and paragraphs will be returned.
Other Bacon-stuff
If you find this all funny and want more Bacon, they also offer a Chrome extension as well as Android and IOS apps that allow you to… well, I’m sure you can figure out what these do… more Bacon. Although I will note that these apps are pretty outdated, so use at your own risk. There is a jQuery plugin, and three.. count ’em three WordPress plugins for increased Bacon madness. And to top it all off: a baconmockup HTML generator. This might be a bit too much Bacon for me. They had me at the JSON API calls.
