Collection Dates API
From a client's question to a live service, handled end to end
It started as a question: could a council's website show residents a full year of collection dates? The existing integration only returned the last and next collection, so new subscribers had to be loaded by hand and often missed their first one. Rather than wait for a change to the core product, I proposed a standalone API and took it the whole way. I ran the scoping call with the client, the council and their web supplier, wrote the specification with example requests and responses, broke the work into an itemised estimate, and quoted both the build and the monthly running cost.
Then I built it. Given a property reference and a date range, it queries the back-office waste platform over SOAP and returns clean JSON: each collection with its original date, any rescheduled date and a bank holiday flag. Requests are strictly validated, authenticated by a key in the header, and rate limited per caller and per property. I deployed it to Azure Functions and delivered it with client-facing API documentation, Application Insights logging and 50 scripted test cases covering success, failure and edge conditions.