I Built an API Because My Government’s Website Got the Date Wrong (and Just… Deleted It)
There’s a funny (and slightly sad) story behind why I built mabims.dev . It started with a date. More specifically, a Hijri date . Once Upon a Time, the Government Website Had the Date For a long time, Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs (Kemenag) website displayed the current Hijri date. It was convenient. You opened the website, looked at the corner of the page, and there it was: Today:…
The author, a junior developer, built an API called mabims.dev to provide an accurate Hijri calendar for Indonesian developers. The original reason was due to a discrepancy between the official Kemenag website's Hijri date and the website itself, which caused confusion. The issue was solved by deleting the incorrect display. After becoming a developer, the author understood the importance of using a reliable API for displaying the correct Hijri date.
However, most available libraries and APIs use the Umm al-Qura calendar, which is not the official calendar of Indonesia. The Indonesian Hijri date can differ by one day from the Saudi-based Umm al-Qura calendar. Thus, the author created mabims.dev to provide an Indonesian-friendly API that uses the official Kemenag calendar and the Neo MABIMS criteria.
The API provides a simple HTTP endpoint that returns the current Hijri date according to Indonesian standards. It is free, open source, and does not require an API key. The author hopes that other Indonesian developers will find the API useful.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
