Web Hooks Forging a Personalized Programmable Interconnected Internet Ryan Teixeira Bar Camp Miami Feb 2009

Programmable World of Tomorrow Give credit where credit is due Jeff Lindsay “Web Hooks and the Programmable World of Tomorrow” on slideshare

Give credit where credit is due

Jeff Lindsay

“Web Hooks and the Programmable World of Tomorrow” on slideshare

Traditional Communication My Bank

Personal Computing

We Discovered the Internet

Email Is Still The Killer App Now we can send email Yeah

My Bank and I Can Talk Your balance is low Online banking Email notifications

Now I'm Getting Social What do they all do?

Send Me Email!

Email Is Great We Need to Move On

I Sign Up for a New Service I have a new service called QUIBLR Ok Cool. Sign me up.

http://ryantxr.appjet.com/hello Please send it to this URL... I might have some information for you. I'll email it to you.

What is that? It's a PHP script on my web host.

What does that do? Whatever I want

The Idea Is Not New Been doing it for years

RESTful Web Services Did not really get popular until it had a name

Two Sides of The Same Coin

Feeds Are Everywhere

The One Way World of Yesteryear This made sense when desktops were readers and the web was viewed primarily as a content distribution media. We have to request the data

Web Applications Consume Feeds

Polling Sucks! Can I have the data? Here it is Bored

Joshua Schachter Had An Idea http://joshua.schachter.org/

Worked For Paypal

Proposal Building on top of suggestions and proposals for mechanisms to notify of page changes via Web Hooks and XMPP, GetPingd proposes mechanisms for subscribing to content change notifications in a generic and standardized way.

Consider GNIP Making data portability suck less.

Push Is Good But that is not the point

Once Upon A Time There was a command line system that let you combine apps together for a greater purpose.

The Key Was Input and Output Program Processed data comes out Raw data in

We Had All These Programs They were far more useful when strung together You could combine them in any way you wanted

They were far more useful when strung together

You could combine them in any way you wanted

The UNIX Philosophy Write programs that do ONE THING and do it well Write programs to work together Write programs that handle text streams because that is a universal interface

Write programs that do ONE THING and do it well

Write programs to work together

Write programs that handle text streams because that is a universal interface

Web Apps Can Only Respond They can respond to us The can give us information when we ask for it They generally cannot initiate communication that can be consumed by another app

They can respond to us

The can give us information when we ask for it

They generally cannot initiate communication that can be consumed by another app

They Need Web Hooks Use the mechanisms the web already has Use existing protocols Give them a way to call us (or our apps)

Use the mechanisms the web already has

Use existing protocols

Give them a way to call us (or our apps)

Combine Applications Like UNIX Command Line Apps

Imagine Basecamp With Hooks

Anything Can Trigger A Handler

Back To Github

RunCodeRun Integrates With Github

Service Integration

Web Synthesis

Code as Glue

Separation of Concerns

Appjet Server side Javascript Create small handlers Use them as web hooks Run on Appjet site Download AppJet and run on your own server

Server side Javascript

Create small handlers

Use them as web hooks

Run on Appjet site

Download AppJet and run on your own server

Google App Engine More complicated than AppJet Need to know Python Certainly viable

More complicated than AppJet

Need to know Python

Certainly viable

What Else Should Have Web Hooks? My Bank

RSS As Input Use RSSFWD so there is no need for polling

Yahoo Pipes and YQL Has all the data filtering features Needs web hooks Needs an input so data can be pushed to it

Has all the data filtering features

Needs web hooks

Needs an input so data can be pushed to it

Forget About Pushing Content It's All About Integration

Everyone should use whatever apps they want then integrate them

Web Hooks and Feeds Web Hooks do not replace feeds Both a feed and a web hook should be supported HTTP call backs are not new Exposing them to users is the concept

Web Hooks do not replace feeds

Both a feed and a web hook should be supported

HTTP call backs are not new

Exposing them to users is the concept

Web Hooks and XMPP They are not the same Web Hooks are simpler Web Hooks are probably more suited to smaller data that is less frequent XMPP probably more suited to more data and higher frequency

They are not the same

Web Hooks are simpler

Web Hooks are probably more suited to smaller data that is less frequent

XMPP probably more suited to more data and higher frequency

Is there a standard Short answer: NO Perhaps there will be on at some point On his blog data Feb 20 2009, Jeff said this: I’m not going to assume we’ll know everything about the implications of this mechanism that we can encode them in a document that will either be ignored or adopted by everybody, making it harder to adapt to change. The longer we can put off standardizing, the better.

Short answer: NO

Perhaps there will be on at some point

On his blog data Feb 20 2009, Jeff said this:

I’m not going to assume we’ll know everything about the implications of this mechanism that we can encode them in a document that will either be ignored or adopted by everybody, making it harder to adapt to change. The longer we can put off standardizing, the better.

John Udell Envisions the Internet As a new programming paradigm that takes the whole Internet as its platform

One More Cool Thing

Thanks Ryan Teixeira [email_address] ryantxr ryantxr http:// devsanctum . com