Thoughts on the Netflix API Closure

A year ago Netflix announced that they were shuttering their public API: no new API keys or affiliates and no more support. Earlier this week they announced that the entire public API will be shutdown by November 2014. This is interesting news and its been covered in various places already, including this good overview at … Continue reading Thoughts on the Netflix API Closure →

RDF Data Access Options, or Isn’t HTTP already the API?

This is a follow-up to my blog post from yesterday about RDF and JSON. Ed Summers tweeted to say: ...your blog post suggests that an API for linked data is needed; isn't http already the API? I couldn't answer that in 140 characters, so am writing this post to elaborate a little on the last … Continue reading RDF Data Access Options, or Isn’t HTTP already the API? →

Explaining REST and Hypertext: Spam-E the Spam Cleaning Robot

I'm going to add to Sam Ruby's amusement and throw in my attempt to explicate some of Roy Fielding's recent discussion of what makes an API RESTful. If you've not read the post and all the comments then I encourage you to do so: there's some great tidbits in there that have certainly given me … Continue reading Explaining REST and Hypertext: Spam-E the Spam Cleaning Robot →

XML Hypertext: Not Dead, Merely Resting?

"The dreams of XML hypertext are dead, or at least thoroughly dormant" Simon St Laurent's XML.com article on XQuery is an interesting read. But I think the above statement is worth discussing. Is XML hypertext really dead? Or, if its dormant, is it going to remain so? Firstly what is XML hypertext? I presume from … Continue reading XML Hypertext: Not Dead, Merely Resting? →

Benefits of Refactoring to REST

Edd sent me a pointer to a nice article from Scott Raymond called "Refactoring to REST" in which he outlines how his application code was improved and simplified by adopting a more RESTful design. The application here was built on Rails and used the Simply Restful plugin to nudge Rails into a more RESTful aspect. … Continue reading Benefits of Refactoring to REST →

QOTD: Fielding on Form(s)

Roy Fielding on why HTML4 forms only support GET and POST: The only reason the HTML4 spec has only two options available in that field is *because* of the browser bugs. W3C specs have no spine. In an earlier message in the thread he urged folk to help fix the browsers. Never occured to me … Continue reading QOTD: Fielding on Form(s) →

Microformats and REST

Just noticed Danny's posting about the new microformat-rest mailing list. I was going to start analysing this but see that Joe Gregorio has already done a good job. I don't think that microformats have much to add to REST as an architectural pattern. It certainly doesn't merit subsetting its use with HTTP; that definitely is … Continue reading Microformats and REST →

X-DOAP

Danny's discussion about sending FOAF URLs as HTTP headers reminded me that I'd not yet followed up on some similar proposals I'd made at XTech 2005. In particular, the use of DOAP descriptions instead of "API Keys" for RESTful interfaces. In my paper after reviewing how services supported authentication and linking of resources, I wrote: … Continue reading X-DOAP →

Service Description Mailing List

If you're interested in web service descriptions, and in particular RESTful service descriptions you should get yourself over to public-web-http-desc, a new W3C mailing list dedicated to precisely that topic. From his introduction, Philippe Le Hegaret described the list as being ...dedicated to discussion of Web description languages based on URI/IRI and HTTP, and aligned … Continue reading Service Description Mailing List →

Connecting Social Content Services using FOAF, RDF and REST

Abstract A growing number of "social content" applications such as Flickr, del.icio.us, audioscrobbler, and AllConsuming are making open web services part of their core offering to end users. These interfaces allow users to query, share, and manipulate the data managed on their behalf by these social content applications. Web service interfaces make such sites more … Continue reading Connecting Social Content Services using FOAF, RDF and REST →