Wanted to share something small I built over a weekend, thought it might be useful for anyone looking for practice project ideas beyond the usual todo-app stuff.
I built a few simple CLI tools that pull real, live data instead of static/dummy JSON:
- A tool that takes an IP address and returns city/country/ISP info
- A currency converter using live exchange rates
- A domain lookup tool that shows WHOIS/registration details
Nothing fancy, just curl + jq wrapped in a small bash script. Example:
curl -s “https://api.apifreaks.com/geolocation/v1/ip?apiKey=YOUR_KEY&ip=8.8.8.8” | jq
Parse the response, format the output, done. Took about 20-30 minutes per tool, and it’s a much better way to practice handling real-world stuff like rate limits, error responses, and auth headers compared to working with static files.
Used APIFreaks for the underlying APIs since it bundles a few different ones (geolocation, currency, WHOIS, DNS) under a single key, so no need to juggle five different signups just to experiment. Free tier was enough for all three tools.
Happy to share the actual scripts if anyone wants them. Also curious what others are building for practice these days.