Build APIs With Kapow Mashup Server

Slideshow Transcript

1. Slide 1: MAX 2007 CONNECT. DISCOVER. INSPIRE. Andreas Krohn Product Manager Kapow Technologies 1 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
2. Slide 2: In a Perfect World Everybody would build  fantastic applications using Flex with great functionality and GUIs Building apps that can  communicate with all other apps And everybody would live  happily ever after 2 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
3. Slide 3: No (useful) Application is an Island Apps need to communicate with  other apps, databases and systems Especially true when we are  talking about Mashups ”A Mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience”* Buildingsituational applications ad-hoc using the web as a platform Requires APIs  Trend towards more and more open APIs Some examples are Google Maps API and Amazon API * Source: Wikipedia.org 3 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
4. Slide 4: What is Holding us Back? The lack of APIs  Itis hard to get to the data and functionality you want to use in your application No access rights  No crossdomain.xml file at all Or a crossdomain.xml file with very limited access rights 4 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
5. Slide 5: The Long Tail #Users Only the top Apps will have an API. Example: Google, Amazon, Salesforce The majority of the Apps will not have an API. Large International Enterpise: ”We have over 6000 internal websites and no APIs” #Apps 5 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
6. Slide 6: Data Sources Structured Data  Databases Only 15-20% of the data is structured in databases! Unstructured Data  Email Excel PDF XML ...and of course HTML 6 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
7. Slide 7: HTML Most systems have an HTML  frontend What if HTML was an API?  Access all the sites on the internet Access all the sites on your intranet Suddenly there would be a way to access almost any system! Challenges  Handle HTML tagsoup JavaScript Handle logins, sessions, cookies Kapow Mashup Server  7 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
8. Slide 8: Inside a Mashup/RIA Data Mashup/RIA Users Sources API WS* SQL Flex Flash DB AIR REST RSS ColdFusion REST Kapow Apps Mashup HTML Atom Server & JS RSS Web WS* API SQL WS* 8 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
9. Slide 9: Kapow Mashup Server Enabling Mashups & RIAs by  giving access to HTML Repackage functionality from HTML Access data from HTML Publish data & functionality from  HTML as REST, RSS or Atom feeds Also Java API, C# API, Portlets, SOAP WS, write to databases etc Automating what a person can do  in a browser Robots 250+ customers  Audi, Bank of America, Simply Hired etc 9 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
10. Slide 10: Openkapow.com Free Mashup Community  Download our development tool and get started Build robots and share with the  Community See what others have built Create REST services and  RSS/Atom feeds from web sites Has a crossdomain.xml file that  gives total access to all sites Use openkapow.com as a proxy 10 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
11. Slide 11: Demo Overview People Search Demo built in Flex  Searching LinkedIn & Spock via  Kapow Robots Flex App Flex calls these robots as REST  services and gets XML back REST XML The robots interact with  LinkedIn LinkedIn.com and Spock.com directly, not via a predefined API Kapow Robots Mashup Server Spock 11 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
12. Slide 12: Robots Robots built in the RoboMaker IDE  Visual development Robot is executed during development Full control over the process flow Easy deployment 12 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
13. Slide 13: REST Service Request & Response http://service.openkapow.com/adobemax/SpockSearch.xml?name=Andreas+Kr  ohn&resultformat=xml Format XML  JSON  HTML  CSV  <?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>  <result> <person> <name>Andreas Krohn</name> <description/> <address>Sweden</address> </person> ... </result> </xml> 13 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
14. Slide 14: Call REST Service from Flex Define HTTPService  id = ”spockService” method = ”GET” url = Robot REST Service URL Excluding input parameters  resultFormat = ”e4x” Call REST Service using send()  spockService.send( { name: search_name.text, format: 'XML' } ); 14 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
15. Slide 15: Use the REST Service Result <mx:DataGrid dataProvider=\"{spockService.lastResult.contact}“ … >  <mx:columns> <mx:DataGridColumn headerText=\"Name\" dataField=\"name\" /> <mx:DataGridColumn headerText=\"Address\" dataField=\"address\"/> <mx:DataGridColumn headerText=“Description\" dataField=“description\"/> ... ”contact” in the dataProvider refers to the RESTOutput.groupName in the robots output  XML 15 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
16. Slide 16: Demo Summary Accessed LinkedIn and Spock  without using an official API. Access via their web sites! Flex App HTML is an API Easy to access all websites from  Flex REST XML LinkedIn Great possibilities to build killer apps Lack of APIs and lack of  Kapow Robots crossdomain.xml files are no Mashup Server longer a problem! Spock 16 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
17. Slide 17: Highlighted Features Access the functionality of a web app without an API  Handles multi-page navigation Does it with great stability and robustness Create RSS/Atom feeds, REST services from almost any web site.  Advanced JavaScript handling and execution.  Handles logins to protected sites using cookies, HTTP & form authentication,  HTTPs. Very powerful data extraction and HTML interaction using regular expressions,  converters and patterns. Flexible error handling and debugging.  Graphical point-and-click development environment  with 1-click deployment. Full control over the process flow in a robot, including conditions and loops  17 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
18. Slide 18: FAQ Is it legal to access all those sites?  It is a tool that should be used responsibly  Often it can add value to the site owner if the data is used in new ways  Is it stable and robust?  Yes! Robots can be built very robust  There are of course tools to monitor robots in production  Web sites do not change as much as most people think (at least not so much that it  causes any problems for robots) Isn’t this really cool?  18 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
19. Slide 19: The End Start thinking about all the  possibilities Download all demo files at:  http://demo.openkapow.com/kapowersearch/k More informations at  Openkapow.com Kapowtech.com Questions?  19 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.