Adding realtime to your API Justin Karneges CEO, Fanout [email protected] @jkarneges

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] About me 䡧 Fanout 䡧 Livefyre CTO 䡧 XMPP contributor 䡧 Keywords: realtime, network protocols, federation, open standards

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Topics 䡧 What is a realtime API? 䡧 Challenges 䡧 A new architecture 䡧 Demo

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] What is a realtime API?

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] What is realtime? 䡧 “Push” data to recipients 䡧 News, fintech, collaboration, chat, dispatch, games, etc. 䡧 Near-realtime

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Does my API need to be realtime? 䡧 Users expect realtime experiences 䡧 Realtime apps depend on realtime APIs 䡧 Polling sucks 䡧 So…. yes

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] “A Post HTTP World” ? 䡧 Don’t worry, most realtime APIs today are HTTP-based. 䡧 There are new protocols, but it’s going to be a long transition. 䡧 Also, HTTP/2 may address most issues.

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Common realtime push mechanisms 䡧 HTTP streaming 䡧 HTTP long-polling 䡧 Webhooks (HTTP callbacks) 䡧 WebSockets

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] HTTP streaming 䡧 Response with indefinite length 䡧 Content usually line-delimited text 䡧 Usually JSON or Server-Sent Events (SSE)

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] GET /1.1/statuses/sample.json HTTP/1.1
 Host: stream.twitter.com
 Authorization: OAuth […] HTTP streaming

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] HTTP/1.1 200 OK connection: close content-type: application/json date: Fri, 17 Apr 2015 00:32:07 GMT server: tsa transfer-encoding: chunked x-connection-hash: 6028cbda…6f0443a6 {"created_at":"Fri Apr 17 00:32:06 +0000 2015”,"id": 588862464202297345,”text":"tweet 1", … } {"created_at":"Fri Apr 17 00:32:07 +0000 2015”,"id": 588862468392255488,"text":"tweet 2", … } … HTTP streaming

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Challenges

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Immature ecosystem 䡧 Most tools are end-to-end 䡧 Little interoperability 䡧 Realtime APIs tend to be custom-built

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Custom-built realtime push 䡧 Event-driven frameworks 䡧 Complex code 䡧 Separate codebase from the non-realtime parts 䡧 Specific to vendor/application

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] API-oriented realtime solutions

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] A new architecture

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Pull has it right Client Client Client Caching / CDN API Management Backend API + directives API

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Let’s make Push awesome as Pull 䡧 Separate API design, engineering, operations 䡧 Interoperable / standardized components 䡧 Reference implementation: Pushpin 䡧 Proxy server with realtime magic 䡧 Open source

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Pushpin philosophy … the API process …

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Pushpin philosophy GET /stream

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Pushpin philosophy API Server GET /stream

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Pushpin philosophy API Server GET /stream open integration protocol

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Pushpin philosophy Client API Server GET /stream open integration protocol

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Pushpin philosophy Client API Server GET /stream open integration protocol

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Generic Realtime Intermediary Protocol (GRIP) 䡧 Common protocol between edge and backend 䡧 Engineering targets GRIP 䡧 DevOps manages the edge tier however they want 䡧 Client protocol agnostic

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] GRIP flow Client API Server HTTP request

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] GRIP flow Client API Server HTTP request HTTP request (forwarded)

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] GRIP flow Client API Server HTTP request HTTP request (forwarded) instructions response

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] GRIP flow Client API Server HTTP request (hold for updates)

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] GRIP flow Client API Server HTTP request push payload

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] GRIP flow Client API Server HTTP request push payload HTTP response (realtime push)

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Real world example 䡧 LaunchDarkly 䡧 Continuous delivery platform 䡧 Feature flags with controlled rollouts 䡧 Feature checks don’t require contact with LaunchDarkly

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Real world example LD Agent API Backend App Client App Server A LaunchDarkly customer’s web service LaunchDarkly API service GET /page config sync (config cache)

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Demo!

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Example project: TodoMVC 䡧 http://todomvc.pushpin.org/ 䡧 To-do list demo with realtime collaboration 䡧 Built with React, Pushpin, Django, Redis 䡧 API documented with Apiary

Adding realtime to your API [email protected] Thanks! 䡧 Tell us about realtime apps you’re building 䡧 Check out the project:
 http://pushpin.org