Web APIs: The future of software
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The document discusses the evolution and significance of web APIs in software development, emphasizing how they enable programs to communicate and how the internet is becoming a distributed operating system. It explores concepts such as abstraction, REST, JSON, and the practical applications of APIs in various industries, from e-commerce to data services. The future of software centers around leveraging online APIs for building applications, enhancing efficiency, and creating interconnected systems.
Web APIs: The future of software
- 1. APIs: The future of the Web Reuven M. Lerner • reuven@lerner.co.il February 27th, 2014
- 2. Web APIs: The future of software Reuven M. Lerner • reuven@lerner.co.il February 27th, 2014
- 3. In the Beginning, There were Ones and Zeroes.
- 4. Software • Software is the magical collection of instructions that control a computer • At the end of the day, we know that there are ones and zeroes in there. • No matter what language you use, the programs you write are turned into ones and zeroes when they are executed.
- 5. Abstraction • So, why not just use ones and zeroes? • Abstraction: One of the most important concepts in computer science! • Abstraction lets you think big thoughts, not worrying about the underlying infrastructure or implementation
- 7. High level • The greatest abstractions happen in "high-level" languages, such as Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and Lisp • In low-level languages, I work hard to suit the computer. • But in high-level languages, the computer works hard to suit me, by black-boxing the details!
- 9. Repetition • No matter what language you use, you'll eventually find yourself repeating code. • How can you deal with this problem? • Put the code in a common place, and then use it again and again. • Write it once, and then use it — ignoring the implementation
- 11. Programmer virtues • "The three virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris" — Larry Wall • Laziness: Write it once, and then reuse it many times!
- 12. DRY • This leads directly to the idea of DRY — write code only once. • Don't repeat yourself! • Don't repeat yourself!
- 13. Libraries of code • Writing libraries of code, which can then be used by many different programs, is an extremely common programming task. • With a library, we can concentrate on the most important things to our business, rather than focus on infrastructure.
- 14. API • "Application Programming Interface" • What is the interface to a library of code? • Function/method names • Effects (what each function does) • Parameters expected by each function • Return value(s) from each function • What happens if there was an error?
- 15. Modern operating systems • What is an operating system? A bunch of libraries that abstract away the hardware and many other aspects of computers: • Networking • Printing • Running multiple programs • Drawing to the screen
- 16. Operating systems • In other words, an operating system is just a collection of APIs! • You can write your own printing system, but why bother? Just use the printing API that the operating system provides.
- 17. From Wikipedia • Win32 (Windows) • • The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. Cocoa (Mac OS X) • Cocoa is Apple's native object-oriented application programming interface (API) for the OS X operating system.
- 19. RPC • "Remote procedure call" • Don't invoke a library on the local computer — rather, invoke it on another computer! • Abstraction #1: The software library does some task for me • Abstraction #2: I don't have to know how that things are executing remotely
- 20. What is the Web? • URLs — what I want, where it's located, and how I get there • HTTP — a great way to get there • HTML — a type of content
- 21. The entire Web, explained • A browser sends an HTTP request to a server. • The server sends a response (perhaps content, perhaps an error message, perhaps a redirect), and hangs up.
- 22. What if machines browsed, and not humans? • The Web was designed for people. • But you know, the combination of URLs, HTTP, and HTML could be used by computers, too. • And then you wouldn't need to have a "browser" sending a request. It could be any program, right?
- 23. XML • "Extensible markup language" • Not a markup language, but rather a way to define new markup languages! • Now computers can send requests and get results not in human-centric HTML, but in machine-centric XML.
- 24. XML-RPC • Dave Winer suggested that we could use a combination of XML and HTTP for RPC! • • Works across programming languages • Used libraries (XML, HTTP) that already existed • • Works across the Internet Set up a client or server in minutes! But is this really RPC? Actually, yes!
- 25. SOAP • Simple Object Access Protocol • Officially: A more modern, well-defined version of XML-RPC • Realistically: Massive overhead and complexity
- 26. "Web Services" • Both XML-RPC and SOAP are protocols that let you advertise Web services • In other words: APIs against which we can make calls from anywhere on the Internet! • There's a whole alphabet soup of standards that were written to address this problem. • But today, APIs are often cleaner and leaner than this, implemented in different ways
- 27. REST • Representational State Transfer (Roy Fielding) • URLs should be nouns, and different HTTP actions should describe the actions on those nouns • Not a lot of documentation is needed, because REST standardizes how things look on the outside • Wait, how does it look on the inside? What does the implementation look like?
- 29. JSON • JavaScript is everywhere! • And JavaScript syntax is easy to understand • So Douglas Crockford created "JSON" — JavaScript Object Notation — which makes XMLRPC look clunky and fat by comparison • A huge number of programming languages support JSON
- 30. REST + JSON • Modern APIs are thus standardized via REST, and exchange data using JSON • Many frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails, make it trivially easy to create RESTful JSON APIs
- 32. Um. OK. • Web APIs let programs talk to other programs. • And? Why should I care? And how is this the future of software? • Two reasons: • All software is moving online, and • The entire Internet is becoming our OS!
- 33. If an OS is a collection of APIs you can call, then the Internet is becoming a massively distributed OS!
- 34. In other words • Build the parts of your application that are special and specific for you. • The rest of your application should leverage APIs on the Web • And by the way, your application can offer APIs as well, leading to a complex web of API calls!
- 35. Example: FedEx • One of the first companies to offer an API • (Yes, beyond the Web site!) • Benefit to your company: Create custom software that handles all of your package needs, with the appropriate permissions and reporting • Benefit to FedEx: Lock-in, customer satisfaction
- 36. Example: Payment • It used to be difficult to deal with payment and ecommerce — because you implemented it yourself • But now we have APIs that make it easier to deal with. PayPal, Strip, Dwolla, Amazon, PayByGroup. • How can we simplify the API? Simple: Offer a library that wraps up those APIs. • Charging credit cards becomes a one-line task!
- 37. Example: Authentication • Why store usernames and passwords? • • Users need to remember another password • • People don't trust you You're vulnerable Solution: Let people log in via Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc.
- 39. Example: New York Times
- 40. What does this mean? • The New York Times is not only a source for news. • It's now a source for data that people can use to inform others. • It becomes a platform on which you can create new content, and do meta-reporting
- 41. Weather APIs • wunderground.com offers APIs to current weather data • Get weather data, and integrate it into your app • Location-aware apps on your phone can use this to show weather wherever you are!
- 42. Amazon Web Services • Everything is available via an API! • Start new servers, shut down existing servers, and monitor servers — all via APIs • Your application can thus spin up (and spin down) entire servers whenever it needs, using nothing more than URLs and JSON!
- 43. Amazon?!? • Yes, they make billions off of their cloud servers • You can manage those servers via various APIs • Want to manage buying, selling, and management of products on Amazon? Sure, there are APIs for those, too…
- 44. Geocoding • Have a street address, and want to know its longitude and latitude? • Have an IP address, and want to know its country? • There are APIs for this, generally from mapping companies (e.g., Google, Bing, MapQuest)
- 45. Geocoding IP address def geocoder_decode(ip_address) Geocoder.search(ip_address).location rescue nil end
- 46. A/B Testing • optimize.ly lets you do A/B ("split") testing on your Web site by including a snippet of JavaScript • How does it work? By accessing Optimizely's API • How can you modify its behavior? By accessing Optimizely's API from your own program!
- 47. Storage • Dropbox and Google Drive offer APIs! • Store and retrieve Dropbox documents from within your program • Use Dropbox for storage, and it automatically replicates!
- 48. Facebook • Get access to a user's personal information — name, address, and interests • You also get information about the person's friends! • This is potentially a huge privacy issue! So users need to agree to add Facebook API applications, and specifically see what capabilities apps want • (The same is true for LinkedIn, of course.)
- 49. Twitter • Twitter has long offered an API, allowing anyone to tweet from within a program • (You can also read and search through tweets)
- 50. Using the API def tweet_person Twitter.update("Welcome, #{fullname}, to the #NetLogo Modeling Commons, our #{ActiveSupport::Inflector::ordinalize(Person.count)} user!") end
- 52. SOA • Service-Oriented Architecture • Instead of a big Web application, write many small ones that talk to each other via APIs! • Each service can then be created, updated, and maintained by different teams. Or companies. Or individuals. • Easier to create, maintain, scale, and understand
- 53. SaaS APIs • SaaS — software as a service • Applications that run on a server somewhere; they may have a browser-side, as well. • A growing number of SaaS companies offer APIs. This turns the application into something beyond what you use it for in your browser.
- 54. Example API: Harvest • "Harvest," time-tracking and invoicing software, has an API • The time-tracking API lets you keep track of your time. Build a new widget or app that starts and stops your clock, for example. • The extended API lets you edit your clients, projects, and tasks!
- 55. Example API: Job seeking • Looking to hire people? You can use an API to post jobs (on monster.com, linkedin.com, and elsewhere) • Looking for work? You can search via an API! • Trying to match jobs and people? You can use these APIs, and build a company on top of them!
- 57. Example API: Search • Run searches against your favorite search engine • • (Or run searches against multiple search engines, and compare the results!) All search engines provide APIs that let you build on top of what they offer
- 58. ProgrammableWeb.com • Not sure what's out there? • ProgrammableWeb.com lists as many APIs as it can, categorized by topic, protocol and data format. • Don't reinvent the wheel — find one that has already been rolling for a while, and integrate it! • (Let someone else do the hard work of implementing things. Laziness wins again!)
- 59. Connecting • IFTTT ("If this, then that") • It's an connector for APIs! • You can say, "When I'm tagged in a photo on Facebook, post a note to my blog." • Once a company is part of the IFTTT family, you can connect APIs for added
- 61. Mobile apps • Mobile apps all use APIs! • They usually talk to Web sites via XML or JSON • In other words, a mobile app has two parts • • • Client (running on the device) Server (offering a JSON API) Support iOS and Android? Two clients, one API!
- 62. Single-page apps • As browsers get smarter, more of the app is being pushed onto the client, running in JavaScript • So instead of each click being a new HTTP request, you can create a whole application in the browser that occasionally syncs with a server • How does it sync? APIs, of course! • Google Docs work just like this
- 63. Even the browser… • How do programs talk to the browser? Via APIs! • DOM — API for us to read and update a Web page • Call APIs from the browser, to talk to lots of servers • e.g., Disqus, Facebook, LiveFyre — add discussion to any page!
- 64. APIs on the server • Consume: • • Logging, payment, analytics, authentication Offer: • Authentication, read/write your unique data, aggregation, analytics
- 65. Make a fortune! • The path to startup success: 1. Come up with an idea 2. ??? 3. Profit!
- 66. What's stage 2? • The path to startup success: 1. Come up with an idea 2. Offer an API to information or analysis that no one else can offer 3. Profit!
- 67. $
- 68. Opportunities in your work? • An API doesn't have to be big or complex • It can often solve simple problems — saving you money and making you more efficient • Don't e-mail Excel files to one another. Rather, create an API on a local server!
- 69. Thanks! Any questions? • You can always find me at: • reuven@lerner.co.il • http://www.lerner.co.il/ • Get my newsletter, with articles and insights like this! • 054-496-8405 • “reuvenlerner” on Skype • @reuvenmlerner on Twitter