I am in the process of creating an app (cross-platform with Ionic framework) and during my research about app with this framework I found the one created for HabitRPG and it is using an API to retrieve data, it totally suits my app as well, but I don't know where to start to create an API nor what to use.
I allready did some quick test with Spring, NodeJS and Symfony (with FOS) but I'm looking for something really easy to use and to setup but still to have a lot of flexibility (like manage security, users, and data visibility).
Is there a specific technology easy enough to start with ?
If you want to create a Web API and host it, you can perhaps have the look at APISpark (http://restlet.com/products/apispark/). It's an online plateform that allows to design your APIs following REST principles and then host them. The data are also managed by the platform.
Hope it helps.
Thierry
Related
I use OmniFocus a ton and I'd really like to be able to connect my data there to other things (Zapier, IFFFT, Beeminder, etc). There's a lot of support for putting data into OmniFocus through these services, but I can't find any support for getting data out of OmniFocus.
In thinking about this, I realized my question isn't really about OmniFocus but rather about building a connector to a service that I don't own. So this is my scenario:
I have data on some publicly accessible web service (in the case of OF, it's Dropbox)
I want to build and host some sort of application that accesses that data and parses it and then provides a REST API that other servers can then query.
Ideally I'd like to make this service available to others - this seems tricky because they have to somehow enable my application to read their data.
I'm a fairly experienced software dev but I have zero experience with web applications or cloud applications. I'm not looking for a super in-depth answer here, but more of a general sketch of how this would work (or a confirmation that this really isn't feasible).
I am programming a Symfony2 App. The structure of my Symfony2 app like:
Login (username / password)
Get Survey for this Login / for this User
User input / click answers. After each click a Ajax request save the answer
User submit survey after answering every question
I have no experience with mobile apps like IOS, Android or Windows. The mobile will created by an other team. The question ist quite common, but which steps i must realize? Are there any literature that you can recommend me?
What was the right way to create an API?
How far Symfony2 supports to create an API for this use cases?
Unfortunately I have no experience on REST, but i suspect this is necessary, right?
I look forward to each answer.
Let me state the obvious first, if you start building a project with technologies you don't know enough about, it WILL be a nightmare. So by all means take your time to learn what you need.
REST is the reccomended standard to build an API since it's native http native and it's quite simple and flexible at the same time. There are tons of simple tutorials on REST, starting from Wikipedia, so I won't link them here.
But I'll tell you a secret, a web service can simply be any web page that reply to your requests with structured data. I.e. even a non-REST series of "webpages" the reply with JSON data can be defined a web service.
By now you see that you can easily do that with Symfony. If you already know how to do stuff and show pages with Symfony, only add JSONResponse to the mix , and also the _format routing parameter, and you should be on a good way.
You just create a path (i.e. an action) for whatever the mobile application needs to do. Of course later on you will learn the beauty of REST and refactor your API accordingly, but first thing you build a working system.
Reading this blog post is a good start. Now if your application will only serve API responses there is the very good Symfony REST Edition which already includes all bundles and tools needed to create an API centric application with Symfony2.
You also have the Lionframe framework but I didn't tested it yet.
I've just started on a small project to create some REST services using Google App Engine and Java. I'm new to both technologies, but I've done some reading on both. I'm familiar with SOAP (have used them previously), and I think I understand the conceptual differences between REST and SOAP.
Currently I need info regarding two things:
1) I'm trying to find some tutorial which builds a simple REST service from scratch for deploying on Google App Engine (GAE). The simpler the better, but it should have at least a few routing options. I don't need any UI, if that matters.
2) Which RESTful Framework should I use with Google App Engine. Again, simplicity is what I'd like, and something which has tutorials and a newcomer can easily grasp.
My ultimate goal is to just write a REST wrapper with multiple routing options, which eventual consumes some pre-existing SOAP services and returns their results.
Have you checked out Google Cloud Endpoints for creating a REST service? Its pretty simple and straightforward, also has support for OAuth.
I would give Jello framework a try. It offers a clean, and simple to follow, JSON format and provides a very powerful and comprehensive RESTful implementation that follows the OData specification.
Here is Jello's REST development guide: http://jello-framework.com/guide/rest.html
I'm, going to write a web app, which should be CRUD accessible from both, the web and native mobile device apps. For the latter i'm definitely committed to a REST API. Is it possible to realize that with Meteor.com ? Would it be an option to use Meteor for just the web and a second REST interface to directly talk to the mongo? Since the meteor client listens for changes in the mongodb this should not cause conflicts, does it?
As of 2015, look at Gadi's answer for the Meteorpedia entry on REST APIs, and at krose's answer comparing REST API packages. Discussion for folding REST APIs into core is on Hackpad. This question is a duplicate of How to expose a RESTful service with Meteor, which has much better answers. -- Dan Dascalescu
Old answer (2012) below.
For adding RESTful methods on top of your data, look into the Collection API written for Meteor:
https://github.com/crazytoad/meteor-collectionapi
As for authentication for accessing the database, take a look at this project:
https://github.com/meteor/meteor/wiki/Getting-started-with-Auth
Both are definitely infantile in development, but you can create a RESTful API and integrate it with a mobile native client pretty easily.
There are a lot of duplicates of this question. I did a full write-on on this in Meteorpedia which I believe covers all issues:
http://www.meteorpedia.com/read/REST_API
The post reviews all 6 options for creating REST interfaces, from highest level (e.g. smart packages that handle everything for you) to lowest level (e.g. writing your own connectHandler).
Additionally the post covers when using a REST interface is the right or wrong thing to do in Meteor, references Meteor REST testing tools, and explains common pitfalls like CORS security issues.
If you are planning to develop a production application, then Meteor is not an option right now. Its under constant change, and there are still many common features it has to support before its ready to use, which will be quite some time.
For your Question, Somebody has already asked and answered the question about support for file uploading in meteor(also contains HTTP handing related information).
How would one handle a file upload with Meteor?
I'm working with NodeJS + Mongoose, writing a Single Page Application, so I need to serve some statics and then all the interaction between frontend and backend is done via XHR. Eventually I'm thinking about writing a native mobile app accessing the same backend. Is there any pattern / best practice I should apply here?, I thought that I may need to extract the API to be exposed via Restify, and handle the requests from the webapp only with ExpressJS? or should I just put all the stuff exposed via Restify? I guess my confusion comes from not being worked with Restify before, so any explanation about how is it different from ExpressJS (specially when talking about a Single Page App) is really welcome.
I am implementing a similar solution, mobile app & website with expressjs and backbonejs. I did not use restify because i did not think i needed the extra complexity, there were not that many API endpoints so expressjs handled everything ok for me.
BTW take a look at this post on restify performance, I just saw it today and have not personally validate the contents.
Benchmarking APIs using PerfectAPI vs Express.js vs Restify.js « « PerfectAPI Blog PerfectAPI Blog http://bit.ly/xrTguB
Restify is packaging DTrace and various handlers that Express doesn't. If you just have one API endpoint and don't need DTrace, it doesn't make sense to run Restify.
Also, you might want to try express-resource