Hypermedia APIs & Self-Building Apps

Transcript

1. Vance Lucas • Co-Founder, Brightbit http://brightb.it Hypermedia APIs & Self-Building

   Apps

2. Who are You? • Vance Lucas • http://vancelucas.com • @vlucas

   (for heckling) • Brightbit • http://brightb.it • Design, Development & Consulting for web apps, mobile apps and APIs

3. What is a REST API? Hypermedia API?

4. Developed by Leonard Richardson http://martinfowler.com/articles/richardsonMaturityModel.html

5. “Level 3” is a pre- condition of REST Roy T.

   Fielding http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven

6. You must have hypermedia controls in your API to call

   it REST

7. “A REST API should be entered with no prior knowledge

   beyond the initial URI (bookmark) and set of standardized media types that are appropriate for the intended audience (i.e., expected to be understood by any client that might use the API). From that point on, all application state transitions must be driven by client selection of server-provided choices that are present in the received representations or implied by the user’s manipulation of those representations.” Roy T. Fielding http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven

8. What are these “hypermedia controls”?

9. Two Key Things

10. Links

11. Forms

12. But you can’t make forms in an API! Whhaaaaa!

13. You Can. Kind of...

14. JSON Schema http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-zyp-json-schema-03

15. JSON Schema { "description":"A person", "type":"object", "properties":{ "name":{"type":"string"}, "age" :{

    "type":"integer", "maximum":125 } } }

16. URI Templates RFC 6570 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6570

17. URI Templates http://uri.com/~{username}/ #-> http://uri.com/~fred/ http://uri.com/dictionary/{term:1}/{term} #-> http://uri.com/dictionary/c/cat http://uri.com/search{?q,lang} #->

    http://uri.com/search?q=cat&lang=en

18. HAL Spec (Unofficial) http://stateless.co/hal_specification.html

19. HAL Specification { "_links": { "self": { "href": "/orders" },

    "next": { "href": "/orders?page=2" }, "search": { "href": "/orders?id={order_id}" } }, "_embedded": { "order": [ { "_links": { "self": { "href": "/orders/123" }, "customer": { "href": "/u/bob", "title": "Bob" } }, "total": 30.00, "currency": "USD", "status": "shipped", "placed": "2011-01-16", } ] } }

20. Link “rel” Types http://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link- relations.xml

21. No official spec for linking or describing resources for JSON

    or XML APIs

22. Too Boring; Didn’t Listen: Link and describe resources however you

    want, but be consistent.

23. DEMO TIME! App: https://github.com/vlucas/brightbudget-app API: https://github.com/vlucas/brightbudget-web

24. Questions? Rate this talk: https://joind.in/6205