API Driven Development

API DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT Or; Eating Your Own Dog Food

NICK JACKSON @jacksonj04

APIS HAVE MADE US:• Smarter• More Responsive• Faster• Better at what we do• Produce a better user experience

IN TODAY’S LECTURE...• What is an API?• How can I use it to drive development?• Why should I care?• How CodeIgniter made it easy.

WHAT IS AN API? A Really Quick Introduction

DRIVEN BY APIS Planning For The Win

NOW WITH AN A PI!!!*Fancy Web Service

We Have An API!*❖ API only available on Triple Platinum Plus plan.❖ API allows reading of content only, not creation, modiﬁcation or deletion.❖ API will not be kept up to date with new changes.❖ No support or documentation is available for API.❖ API may randomly stop working, and we won’t really care about ﬁxing it for you. After all, it’s not important.

Database Application User

User 3rd PartyDatabase Application API Application User

THE SOLUTION?

Database API

3rd Party User ApplicationDatabase API Application User

EAT YOUR OWN DOG FOOD

YAY FOR APIS! But why should I care?

ARCHITECTURE IS BETTER• Forced to think about data types and methods early on.• Consistent behaviour across application is easier to achieve.

DEVELOPMENT IS EASIER• Calling a well designed API is simple.• Error messages become cleanly captured by design.• APIs encourage code reuse at both API and application end.

UPDATES BECOME SIMPLER• Run two or more API versions concurrently.• Tweak API backend and all frontends (‘ofﬁcial’ and 3rd party) beneﬁt at once.

YOUR API WILL BE BETTER• APImust include everything you want your application to be able to do.• Reliability of API is now critical.• Documentation is better.

SO WHAT OF CODEIGNITER? Why CodeIgniter already has you thinking the right way

Model Controller View

Model Controller API API Controller View

HELPFUL OUT OF THE BOX• PHP is built to work in a web environment, so functions to GET, POST etc are really simple.• Output class has caching, media types and so-on.• Upcoming in v3: Unit testing (and other goodies)

LIBRARIES AND EXTENDABILITY• Awesome libraries out there already.• Many, many tutorials out there already.• Google it, try “CodeIgniter REST / OAuth / API” etc.• Really easy to extend output class to do custom API stuff.

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API Driven Development

by Nick Jackson on Feb 20, 2012

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API Driven Development — Presentation Transcript