A brief introduction to REST and some context for newbies in this API world we are building

1. API REST for beginners...
...or why I should care about building an
understandable API

2. POST /hello-world
Javier Lafora
(@eLafo)

4. A small walk through historyA small walk through history

6. Web of documents

7. Widgets

8. Web scraping

9. SOAP

11. Mashups

12. http://cartodb.github.io/lisbon-2014/#/2/24.7/-7.0/0

13. Internet of Things

14. Internet of everything

16. Same app on multiple devices

17. http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/api-billionaires-club_b11424

18. http://www.programmableweb.com/news/9000-apis-mobile-gets-serious/2013/04/30

20. http://apiux.com/2013/05/29/api-hierarchy-needs/

21. https://www.lordabbett.com/content/lordabbett/en/perspectives/equityperspectives/finding-growth-

22. http://www.zdnet.com/internet-of-things-8-9-trillion-market-in-2020-212-billion-connected-things-7000021516/

26. Dissecting an HTTP Request
● Method
● Path
● Header
● Body

27. Methods
GET: Requests a representation of the specified resource
POST: Requests that the server accept the entity enclosed in the request as a new
subordinate of the web resource identified by the URI
PUT: Requests that the enclosed entity be stored under the supplied URI
PATCH: Apply partial modifications to a resource
DELETE: Deletes the specified resource
HEAD: Asks for the response identical to the one that would correspond to a GET
request, but without the response body
OPTIONS: Returns the HTTP methods that the server supports for the specified URL

28. GET request

29. POST request

30. Dissecting an HTTP response
● Status
● Header
● Body

31. HTTP response

32. http://www.slideshare.net/supercoco9/what-is-rest-why-is-it-part-of-the-rails-way-railsconf-2014-jav

33. Defining an API

34. What to do...

35. ...with what?

36. RPC
What to do?
In the body
With what?
In the body
POST /rpc HTTP/1.1
Host: www.upcdatabase.com
User-Agent: XMLRPC::Client (Ruby
1.8.4)
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 158
Connection: keep-alive
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<methodCall>
<methodName>lookupUPC</methodNa
me>
...
</methodCall>

37. REST
What to do?
In the HTTP method
With what?
In the path
GET /hello.txt HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com

38. REST-RPC Hybrid
What to do?
In the path
With what?
In the path
GET services/rest?api_key=xxx&method=flickr.photos.search&tags=penguin
HTTP/1.1
Host: www.flickr.com

40. REST
(Representational
State Transfer)
Roy Fielding
(2000)
Architecture for
the web

41. Resources

42. resources
are not
models

43. Uniform and constrained interface
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0903_peterson/0903_peterson.html

44. REST Principles (some)

45. Addressability

46. Addressability
/bands/iron_maiden
/bands/the_beatles
/releases/20140529
/releases/last

47. Representation oriented

48. Statelessness

49. HATEOAS (Hypermedia as the
Engine of Application State)

52. Use methods and
response statuses well

53. Make your data format consistent

54. Versioning

57. https://invoicefu.com/es/developers/api_docs

58. https://developers.teowaki.com/api-overview

59. Questions?

60. aspgems.com
fin
Thanks