API Reliability Guide

1. API Reliability Guidehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/erreeffe/3769670873/ @nickdenardis / #psuweb12

2. Nick DeNardisAssociate Director of Web Communicationsat Wayne State Universityhttp://wayne.edu/Host of EDU Checkuphttp://educheckup.com/Curator of EDU Snippitshttp://edusnippits.com/Writer for .eduGuruhttp://doteduguru.com/

3. DisclaimerSome assembly required.

4. APIApplication Programming Interface

5. Not just for robotshttp://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/stevent/3241986538/

6. Value Chainhttp://apigee.com/

7. The API’s job is to make the developer as successful as possiblehttp://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-hate-sandcastles-success-kid

8. It makes the user experience can breakhttp://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/daychokesnight/2149714792/

9. Too slow...http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/toolmantim/6170448143/

10. Too complicated...http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/toolmantim/6170448143/

11. Adds a layerhttp://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jabb/6715983809/

12. Complications with mobile “always on”

13. Mobile isn’t going anywhere 1.45 Million devices per day 371,000 births per dayhttp://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1506

14. Mobile Data Trafﬁc Expected To Rise 40- Fold Over Next Five Yearshttp://techcrunch.com/2010/03/30/mobile-data-traffic-rise-40-fold/

15. Mobile users usemore bandwidth

16. Desktop250 kb - Avg page weight2.5 pages - Avg number per visit 1300625 kb - Bandwidth per visit 975 650Mobile 32550 kb - Avg page weight25 pages - Avg number per visit 0 Data Desktop Mobile1.25 mb - Bandwidth per visit

17. Mobile Desktop 40 30Millions of visitors 20 10 0 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 http://wayne.edu/

18. The mobile Web is slow And it’s mostly our fault

19. You can’t blame the network for everything CSS Images Images New Content Javascript Initial HTML Cell Latency Cell Latency Time Time First Request Second Request

20. Do less better

21. One size != fit allhttps://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/18.0https://api.wayne.edu/v1/ Think versioning from the start

22. SOAP RESTThe request: The request:GET /StockPrice HTTP/1.1 GET /StockPrice/IBM HTTP/1.1Host: example.org Host: example.orgContent-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8 Accept: text/xmlContent-Length: nnn Accept-Charset: utf-8<?xml version="1.0"?> The response:<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" HTTP/1.1 200 OK xmlns:s="http://www.example.org/stock-service"> Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8 <env:Body> Content-Length: nnn <s:GetStockQuote> <s:TickerSymbol>IBM</s:TickerSymbol> <?xml version="1.0"?> </s:GetStockQuote> <s:Quote xmlns:s="http://example.org/stock- </env:Body> service"></env:Envelope> <s:TickerSymbol>IBM</s:TickerSymbol> <s:StockPrice>45.25</s:StockPrice>The response: </s:Quote>HTTP/1.1 200 OKContent-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8Content-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> 4 kb vs 2 kb Round Trip

23. Stick to REST

24. XML suckshttp://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/philmanker/3654636770/

25. Your best friend JSONEasy 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 + )); Douglas Crockford

26. Existing Resourceshttp://doteduguru.com/id7800-results-higher-ed-cms-usage-survey-2011.html

27. Flattened highed = More interfaces CRM CMS iModules Events Course Schedule Parking Flickr YouTube Faculty Proﬁles Library Catalog

28. Your data is everywhere WebsiteCMS Gather & Clean Mobile WebsiteEvents Shadow storage Mobile AppLDAP API Webserver Digital SignageBanner Third Party

29. API is the glue WebsiteCMS Gather & Clean Mobile WebsiteEvents Shadow storage Mobile AppLDAP API Webserver Digital SignageBanner Third Party

30. Rolling your own API Trust no one.

31. Making the glue Ingredients:Server space you controlapi.domain.edu or domain.edu/apiAbility: • Database • Cronjobs • Server logs • Analytics • PHP accelerator • Xdebug

32. Getting data closer

33. Documentation Designhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/edublogger/6950969837/

34. Affordance The physical design will communicate how it is suppose to be usedhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/269032594/

35. /getNews/getNewsReleases/findPeople/getPerson/eventsList/eventInfo/eventRSVP/classSearch/semesterList/parkingLotList/parkingAvailable

36. Create. Read. Update. Delete.http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/fss/2181882493/

37. Read first.http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/hackaday/4425372655/

38. GET /academic/colleges/listing GET /academic/colleges/info/150REST Item Category Function Interface (Class)

39. GET /academic/colleges/listingGET /academic/colleges/infoGET /academic/majors/listingGET /academic/majors/infoGET /academic/classes/listingGET /academic/classes/infoGET /parking/availability/listingGET /parking/availability/info

40. The devil is in the details Simple URLResponse code Total countData container Keep it lightweight 91 KB

41. Use only what you need FiltersLess data 41 KB

42. Writing data

43. POST /admissions/rfi/addPOST /admissions/visit/addPOST /admissions/application/addPOST /academic/colleges/addPOST /academic/colleges/editPOST /academic/majors/addPOST /academic/majors/editPost data:id=3047

44. Soft Delete (keep all the data!)

45. POST /academic/colleges/removePOST /academic/majors/removePOST /academic/classes/removePOST /parking/availability/removePost data:id=3047

46. Authentication /api/user/auth

47. Auth workflowRequest API Key Rate Limit Username/Pass Session IDCheck Credentials Session ID(Do work) Return

48. Rate Limiting 100 per minute per Key/IP

49. Cache. Cache. Cache.

50. Professional cachehttp://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/carlos/2417032795/

51. APC<?php$bar = BAR;apc_store(foo, $bar);var_dump(apc_fetch(foo));?>

52. Static Cachehttp://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/basic_sounds/5779597720/

53. Static files<?phpif ((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);?>

54. HTML5 localStorageif (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 wasnt successfully saved due to quota exceedso 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/

55. JSONPfunction handle_data(data) { // `data` is now the object representation of the JSON data}---http://some.tld/web/service?callback=handle_data:---handle_data({"data_1": "hello world", "data_2":["the","sun","is","shining"]});

56. Expires header <?php header(Expires: .gmdate(D, d M Y H:i:s GMT, time() + 3600)); ?>1 Month 1 Week 1 DaySemesters Courses EventsSubjects Media Experts NewsDegreesMap Categories No CacheMap Locations Course Availability Parking Availability

57. Our StatsFeb 2011 - In production6.1 million requests48% from mobile 21% iOS 23% Android 66% Web95% GET’s16 ms average response time

58. Examples

59. Mobile news

60. maps/locations/listingGoogle API events/event/listing directory/people/listing academic/courses/listing

61. maps/category/listing events/event/listing maps/location/info

62. faculty/proﬁle/info go/url/info

63. Hackathon Community through datahttp://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/hackny/5684887983/

64. Resources• http://apigee.com/• http://rubyonrails.org/• http://cakephp.org/• https://groups.google.com/group/api-craft/• 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

65. 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

66. Questions? Don’t be shy.

67. Thank You @nickdenardis nick.denardis@gmail.com http://nickdenardis.com/https://speakerdeck.com/u/nickdenardis