Eating Your Own Dog Food

Transcript

1. EATING YOUR OWN DOG FOOD Building a repository with API-driven development
2. HTTP://LNCN.EU/FMR9 It’s in a repository and everything!
3. NICK JACKSON Lead Web Developer @jacksonj04
4. JOSS WINN Senior Lecturer @josswinn
5. DO WHAT? • New RDM Platform • Focus on data during research, not after.
6. YE OLDE REPOSITORY • Built on the premise of deposition of files (or pointers). • Generally limited interface methods, eg browser or nothing. • Focuses on format (if filetype), not form (ie structure).
7. OUR APPROACH
8. LOVE YOUR BACKEND (LOL) • Be prepared to deal with raw data. • Build your APIs first. Not your UI, your APIs. • Build good APIs which people will want to use.
9. EAT YOUR OWN DOG FOOD • Use your own APIs to build the frontend. • Use your own documentation. • Find a user, and make them use things.
13. FORGET THE CONTAINERS • Storing a CSV file is great, if you want a whole CSV file. • Research happens on subsets of data. • Give researchers a shared, easily usable database. • Use the APIs to put stuff in and out automatically.
14. MAKE IT EXTENSIBLE • Make sure data is accessible and writable easily. • Encourage re-usable modularity. • Rely on things that do things to get things done.
15. WHY?
16. WE BUILD BETTER STUFF • APIs are robust and reliable. • APIs are easily implementable by 3rd parties. • All functionality is available over APIs. • Error handling is consistent and clear. • Security is forcibly implemented across the board.
17. IMPROVED VISIBILITY • Database querying lets researchers find what they want. • Improved quantitative information on how much stuff. • Data can be seamlessly integrated with other systems.
18. SCALE TO INFINITY (And Beyond!) • Designed to scale horizontally. • No horrible statefulness to maintain. • Loose coupling means no un-picking necessary. Just go.
20. THE PROBLEMS • Takes time to design decent architecture first, so less ‘jump in’. • Doubling up development at API and interface ends. • APIs can add overhead, especially ‘heavy’ types like XML-RPC.
21. FIN.