Creating an Effective Mobile API

Your visitors interact with content, not with your website. Content consistency is crucial to a successful user experience. Re-publishing is one option but it’s an inside-out action that relies on the authority controlling where the information goes. An API frees your data and the responsibility to where it is published and accessed. Mobile is a major consumer for your API but not every API is setup to handle the mass of requests coming from those devices. Learn how to mobile devices consume API’s with limited or low bandwidth and how to to tailor your API to be as efficient and effective as possible.

http://environmentsforhumans.com/2012/doteduguru-summit/

Transcript

1. Creating API’s for Mobile Nick DeNardis
2. @nickdenardis Associate Director of Web Communications Wayne State University http://wayne.edu/ Host of EDU Checkup http://educheckup.com/ Curator of EDU Snippits http://edusnippits.com/ Writer for .eduGuru http://doteduguru.com/
3. Disclaimer This talk is less about how to code an API but more about the strategy behind creating a flexible and resilient API.
4. API: Application programming interface
5. Not just for robots. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevent/3241986538/
6. The API’s job is to make the developer as successful as possible http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-hate-sandcastles-success-kid
7. Where isn’t it useful? http://www.flickr.com/photos/daychokesnight/2149714792/
8. Too slow... http://www.flickr.com/photos/toolmantim/6170448143/
9. Too complicated... http://www.flickr.com/photos/toolmantim/6170448143/
10. Adds a layer http://www.flickr.com/photos/jabb/6715983809/
11. Complications with mobile “always on”
12. Mobile isn’t going anywhere 1.45 Million devices per day 371,000 births per day http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1506
13. Mobile Data Traffic Expected To Rise 40- Fold Over Next Five Years http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/30/mobile-data-traffic-rise-40-fold/
14. 250 kb - Avg page weight 2.5 pages - Avg number per visit 625 kb - Bandwidth per visit Desktop 50 kb - Avg page weight 25 pages - Avg number per visit 1.25 mb - Bandwidth per visit Mobile 0 325 650 975 1300 Data Desktop Mobile
15. 0 10 20 30 40 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Mobile Desktop Millions of visitors http://wayne.edu/
16. The Mobile Web is Slow And it’s mostly our fault
17. Time Cell Latency Initial HTML Javascript Images CSS You can’t blame the network for everything
18. Time Cell Latency New Content Images Second Request
19. Do less better
20. One size != fit all Think versioning from the start https://api.twitter.com/1/ https://us2.api.mailchimp.com/1.3/ https://api.foursquare.com/v2/ https://api.instagram.com/v1/ https://www.salesforce.com/services/Soap/c/18.0 https://api.wayne.edu/v1/
21. SOAP The request: GET /StockPrice HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: nnn <?xml version="1.0"?> <env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/ 2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:s="http://www.example.org/stock-service"> <env:Body> <s:GetStockQuote> <s:TickerSymbol>IBM</s:TickerSymbol> </s:GetStockQuote> </env:Body> </env:Envelope> The response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: nnn <?xml version="1.0"?> <env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/ 2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:s="http://www.example.org/stock-service"> <env:Body> <s:GetStockQuoteResponse> <s:StockPrice>45.25</s:StockPrice> </s:GetStockQuoteResponse> </env:Body> </env:Envelope> The request: GET /StockPrice/IBM HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Accept: text/xml Accept-Charset: utf-8 The response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: nnn <?xml version="1.0"?> <s:Quote xmlns:s="http://example.org/stock- service"> <s:TickerSymbol>IBM</s:TickerSymbol> <s:StockPrice>45.25</s:StockPrice> </s:Quote> REST 4 kb vs 2 kb Round Trip
22. Stick to REST
23. XML sucks http://www.flickr.com/photos/philmanker/3654636770/
24. Your best friend JSON Easy to encode: $arr = array('a' => 1, 'b' => 2, 'c' => 3, 'd' => 4, 'e' => 5); json_encode($arr); Easy to decode: $json = '{"a":1,"b":2,"c":3,"d":4,"e":5}'; json_decode($json); Javascript: var myObject = eval('(' + json + ')');
25. Existing Resources http://doteduguru.com/id7800-results-higher-ed-cms-usage-survey-2011.html
26. Not everything is in the CMS CMS Events LDAP Banner Gather & Clean Shadow storage API Webserver Website Mobile Website Mobile App Digital Signage Third Party
27. Rolling your own API Trust no one.
28. Create. Read. Update. Delete. http://www.flickr.com/photos/fss/2181882493/
29. Start with a map http://www.flickr.com/photos/56684679@N08/6155875352/
30. Read first. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hackaday/4425372655/
31. GET /academic/colleges/listing GET /academic/colleges/info GET /academic/majors/listing GET /academic/majors/info GET /academic/classes/listing GET /academic/classes/info GET /parking/availability/listing GET /parking/availability/info
32. The devil is in the details Simple URL Response code Total count Data container Keep it lightweight 91 KB
33. Use only what you need Filters Less data 41 KB
34. Writing data
35. POST /admissions/rfi/add POST /admissions/visit/add POST /admissions/application/add POST /academic/colleges/add POST /academic/colleges/edit POST /academic/majors/add POST /academic/majors/edit
36. Soft Delete (keep all the data!)
37. POST /academic/colleges/remove POST /academic/majors/remove POST /academic/classes/remove POST /parking/availability/remove
38. Authentication /api/user/auth
39. Cache. Cache. Cache.
40. Professional cache http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlos/2417032795/
41. APC <?php $bar = 'BAR'; apc_store('foo', $bar); var_dump(apc_fetch('foo')); ?>
42. Ghetto cache http://www.flickr.com/photos/basic_sounds/5779597720/
43. Static files <?php if ((is_file($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'].'.json')) && (time()-filemtime($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'].'.json') < 3600)) { readfile($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'].'.json'); exit; } // (the php script itself goes here) echo $response; $fp = fopen($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'].'.json', 'w'); fwrite($fp, $response); fclose($fp); ?>
44. if (typeof(localStorage) == 'undefined' ) { alert('Your browser does not support HTML5 localStorage. Try upgrading.'); } else { try { localStorage.setItem("name", "Hello World!"); //saves to the database, } catch (e) { if (e == QUOTA_EXCEEDED_ERR) { alert('Quota exceeded!'); //data wasn't successfully saved due to quota exceed so throw an error } } document.write(localStorage.getItem("name")); //Hello World! localStorage.removeItem("name"); //deletes the matching item from the database } http://paperkilledrock.com/2010/05/html5-localstorage-part-one/ HTML5 localStorage
45. Expires header <?php header('Expires: '.gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s \G\M\T', time() + 3600)); ?> Semesters Subjects Degrees Map Categories Map Locations 1 Month Courses Media Experts 1 Week Course Availability Parking Availability No Cache Events News 1 Day
46. Our Stats Feb 2011 - In production 2.5 million requests 48% from mobile 21% iOS 23% Android 66% Web 95% GET’s 16 ms average response time
47. Examples
48. Mobile news
49. Google API maps/locations/listing events/event/listing directory/people/listing academic/courses/listing
50. maps/category/listing maps/location/info events/event/listing
51. faculty/profile/info go/url/info
52. Hackathon Community through data http://www.flickr.com/photos/hackny/5684887983/
53. Resources • http://apigee.com/ • http://rubyonrails.org/ • http://cakephp.org/ • http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3018-api-design-for-humans • http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2011/06/the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-of-rest- apis.html • http://sixrevisions.com/html/introduction-web-storage/ • http://webcomm.fiu.edu/2011/11/json-as-an-api-tool-and-why-its-awesome/ • http://doteduguru.com/id4579-results-higher-ed-cms-usage.html
54. Hackathons • http://dschool.stanford.edu/blog/2012/01/27/hack-d-kicks-off-more-than-a- dozen-projects-underway/ • http://civic.mit.edu/blog/schock/occupydata-hackathon-2-roundup • http://newmed.media.mit.edu/health-and-wellness-innovation-2012 • http://nyuad.nyu.edu/hackathon/about/ • http://startup.berkeley.edu/hackathon/ • http://www.njit.edu/hackathon/ • http://www.lib.umich.edu/art-architecture-engineering-library/ announcements/48-hour-mobile-app-hackathon
55. Questions? Don’t be shy.
56. Thank You @nickdenardis nick.denardis@gmail.com http://nickdenardis.com/