1997
fast foward 20 years just after commercialization of internet to a perl conference
jon udell talks about websites as data sources that can be reused and remixed
today that idea isn’t very novel
a new programming paradigm
that takes the whole Internet
as its platform
1997
he also talked about a new programming paradigm
i don’t think we’re there yet
but this inspired ...
“What is the equivalent of the pipe
in the age of the web?”
tim oreilly to ask in 2000...
there seems to be resounding consensus the answer is feeds
they sound good in theory
it makes you think of feeds like in the telecom world
lol
h4x
stfu
n00b
...
yeah. my experience with ipc was pretty bad.
ipc usually involves some sort of shared memory mechanism, like a queue
it turns out amazon provides a queue web service
but with a third party queue you only defer the polling
it doesn’t solve the problem, its just fancier rss
so this is not the solution, and probably why not too many people use or know of it
Web Hooks
web hooks are user defined callback URLs that point to a web script to run on a certain event.
you can call them other things...
Web Hooks
• User Callbacks
• Triggers
• Event Handlers
• “Plugouts”
web hooks are user defined callback URLs that point to a web script to run on a certain event.
you can call them other things...
the main mechanism is a standard http post, which is trivial in most environments
Easy (enough) for Users
it’s also very open and easy for the users, which will generally be advanced users, but can easily be
taken advantage of by novice users
as a user, to take advantage of hooks, you’d write a script to handle an event, like the commit
this is a very simple script
Commit!
this makes the user a happy cookie.
and this is a trivial example, using only on web service.
imagine using the api of another in the hook script and chaining these things together
Commit!
but even in this simple example, you see the power it gives to the user and to the data that we’re
trying to “open up” to our users
STDIN STDOUT
Program
back to piping on the command line, remember that it was simple infrastructure that gave you
tremendous power, and one of the key components was making it easy to chain commands
STDIN
Program
we wouldn’t be able to do it without the output part of it
API
Web App
unfortunately that’s how the web is today.
the only output you can get is by using the input (api, feed)
API Hooks
Web App
web hooks gives us this output, and when *combined* with the input of api’s
it will give us and our user tremendous power that i think will really push the web
into being a new programmable paradigm
Program the Web
the possibilities become very rich and i’ve thought about it a lot
there’s probably a lot more
imagine realtime data syncronization
or a chain of events that makes these apps work together in a way you’ve never imagined
API Hooks
Web App
web hooks gives us this output, and when *combined* with the input of api’s
it will give us and our user tremendous power that i think will really push the web
into being a new programmable paradigm