API REST for beginners...
...or why I should care about building an understandable API
POST /hello-world
Javier Lafora(@eLafo)
A small walk through history
Web of documents
Widgets
Web scraping
SOAP
Mashups
http://cartodb.github.io/lisbon-2014/#/2/24.7/-7.0/0
Internet of Things
Internet of everything
Same app on multiple devices
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/api-billionaires-club_b11424
http://www.programmableweb.com/news/9000-apis-mobile-gets-serious/2013/04/30
http://apiux.com/2013/05/29/api-hierarchy-needs/
https://www.lordabbett.com/content/lordabbett/en/perspectives/equityperspectives/finding-growth-in-an-increasingly-digital-world.html
http://www.zdnet.com/internet-of-things-8-9-trillion-market-in-2020-212-billion-connected-things-7000021516/
Dissecting an HTTP Request
Method
Path
Header
Body
Methods
GET: Requests a representation of the specified resource
POST: Requests that the server accept the entity enclosed in the
request as a new subordinate of the web resource identified by the
URI
PUT: Requests that the enclosed entity be stored under the
supplied URI
PATCH: Apply partial modifications to a resource
DELETE: Deletes the specified resource
HEAD: Asks for the response identical to the one that would
correspond to a GET request, but without the response body
OPTIONS: Returns the HTTP methods that the server supports for
the specified URL
GET request
POST request
Dissecting an HTTP response
Status
Header
Body
HTTP response
http://www.slideshare.net/supercoco9/what-is-rest-why-is-it-part-of-the-rails-way-railsconf-2014-javier-ramirez
Defining an API
What to do...
...with what?
RPC
What to do?In the body
With what?In the body
POST /rpc HTTP/1.1Host: www.upcdatabase.comUser-Agent:
XMLRPC::Client (Ruby 1.8.4)Content-Type: text/xml;
charset=utf-8Content-Length: 158Connection: keep-alive
lookupUPC...
REST
What to do?In the HTTP method
With what?In the path
GET /hello.txt HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.com
REST-RPC Hybrid
What to do?In the path
With what?In the path
GET
services/rest?api_key=xxx&method=flickr.photos.search&tags=penguin
HTTP/1.1Host: www.flickr.com
REST
(Representational State Transfer)
Roy Fielding (2000)Architecture for the web
Resources
resources
are not
models
Uniform and constrained interface
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0903_peterson/0903_peterson.html
REST Principles (some)
Addressability
Addressability
/bands/iron_maiden/bands/the_beatles
/releases/20140529/releases/last
Representation oriented
Statelessness
HATEOAS (Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State)
Use methods and
response statuses well
Make your data format consistent
Versioning
https://invoicefu.com/es/developers/api_docs
https://developers.teowaki.com/api-overview
Questions?
Thanks
aspgems.com
fin
