API Driven Applications

An introduction from RedDotRubyConf 2012 to different tools available for developers to use when building API applications.

Transcript

1. API Driven Applications An introduction to using Ruby (and Rails) for building API-only applications.
2. Hi, I’m Darcy.
3. GitHub: sutto Twitter: @sutto Email: sutto@sutto.net
4. Filter Squad. and we make...
6. Consuming & Producing APIS
8. What you should know and love.
9. Distinct API apps
10. Build services
11. Embrace HTTP
12. Embrace HTTP Love
13. Cache-Control Expires ETag Vary
14. Efficient Validation http://rtomayko.github.com/rack-cache/ faq#efficient-validation
15. Varnish + Rack-Cache
16. Be consistent, especially in responses.
18. source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/variationblogr/6658533167/, Used under CC.
19. source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/variationblogr/6658533167/, Used under CC.
20. Simple to learn, explore.
22. Use your browser
24. Versioning
25. A Public API vs Mobile Applications vs Your Web Apps (e.g. Backbone)
26. Header versioning vs URI versioning
27. Building APIs
28. Grape https://github.com/intridea/grape
29. Grape is a REST-like API micro- framework for Ruby. It is built to complement existing web application frameworks such as Rails and Sinatra by providing a simple DSL to easily provide APIs.
30. Grape is a REST-like API micro- framework for Ruby. It is built to complement existing web application frameworks such as Rails and Sinatra by providing a simple DSL to easily provide APIs.
31. It has built-in support for common conventions such as multiple formats, subdomain/prefix restriction, and versioning.
32. It has built-in support for common conventions such as multiple formats, subdomain/prefix restriction, and versioning.
33. Standardised Error Handling
34. Simple Resource Conversion
35. Minimal Dependencies
36. Rails::API https://github.com/spastorino/rails-api
37. “Rails::API is a subset of a normal Rails application, created for applications that don't require all functionality that a complete Rails application provides.”
38. “Rails::API is a subset of a normal Rails application, created for applications that don't require all functionality that a complete Rails application provides.”
39. Take Rails, Skip what you don’t need.
40. Familiar setup, Similar controllers, No view layer.
41. No cookies, No flash, No sessions, No front end stuff.
42. gem install rails-api rails-api new my_api
43. Rocket Pants https://github.com/filtersquad/rocket_pants
44. Built on Rails like Rails-API, Both released around the same time.
45. RocketPants::Base
46. URI-based versioning
47. Automatic Header Metadata (X-Api-*)
48. HTTP Link Headers
49. Opinionated responses
50. Smart error handling / mapping
51. TL;DR: Consider Grape, Rails::API or Rocket Pants.
52. More Reading: “Designing Hypermedia APIs” by Steve Klabnik The Echonest Developer Documentation For building APIs, API Smith Want to read my versioning argument? See http://discovr.info/2012/05/on-apis-and- versioning/
53. TYVM. Questions? Colour Pallette: “Wasabi Suicide”. http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/482416/Wasabi_Suicide