Wolfram Alpha: Short Answers beats Full Results for single-answer queries
Pick the right Wolfram Alpha API for the job: use Short Answers when you need one plaintext answer, not the Full Results API with 13 pods you'll discard. Use Spoken Results for voice-friendly output and Simple Results for a single image. In the Full Results API, default output to json for structured parsing and only ask for xml when you need the raw feed. And keep the AppID server-side; it must not be shipped in frontend code or distributed clients.
Pick the right Wolfram Alpha API for the job: use Short Answers when you need one plaintext answer, not the Full Results API with 13 pods you'll discard. Use Spoken Results for voice-friendly output and Simple Results for a single image. In the Full Results API, default output to json for structured parsing and only ask for xml when you need the raw feed. And keep the AppID server-side; it must not be shipped in frontend code or distributed clients.
Context: Web (pizza-bot wolfram-alpha-api README, flodder23): documents the API family beyond Full Results. getFull returns the object of pods (default output json; set output xml for raw XML). The Wolfram Alpha API family includes Simple Results (single image), Short Answers (single plaintext string), and Spoken Results APIs. Agents that only know the Full Results API over-fetch when they need one number: Short Answers returns just the plaintext answer. Note AppIDs must not be distributed, so these clients are server-side only, never frontend.
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