Best Player Available

[mattheworres]

As a commissioner OR manager, I want to be able to see the next N number of players who are ranked by some measure as being "the best".

So, this is far and away the number 1 requested feature for the draft board, and I whole heartedly agree. I've wanted to implement this since I began writing the draft board over 8 years ago.

The issue is that it requires a data source, of which there are few that check all or most of these boxes:

• are free or low cost
• are available for more than just NFL
• are available for more than 3 seasons
• are kept up to date for the latest season
• are consistent and do not change or disappear throughout their lifespan

I've had 3 different API sources flat out disappear from underneath me, which was one of my primary reasons for being hesitant to implement a highly valuable, but technically challenging (read: fun too) feature. I'd basically sink a month's worth of free time into something that would be broken in 6 months. Narp.

So, what now? Can we list possible API sources here that PHP Draft would be able to pull from?

• Bonus points for more sports than just NFL
• I am partial to ADP as the metric to gauge player worth as it seems more standardized than flat out ranks, though I realize that league size from 8 to 14 does skew those, so it may be too problematic
• Free is obviously best, but I would not completely rule out paying for a service if it seems stable, trustworthy and here to stay.

[mattheworres]

And the answer here just may be to divide and conquer, developing specific data source adapters for each league (the NFL seems to have the most abundant APIs due to its popularity, the MLB seems to have a ton of popularity with statisticians, so there are APIs for it, and the NBA/NHL seem to lose out on most of these, sad panda)