[Discuss] api? rest maybe?

[eric.chadbourne at gmail.com (Eric Chadbourne)]

On 05/22/2013 03:00 PM, Daniel C. wrote:
> On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Eric Chadbourne
> <eric.chadbourne at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I've written a little web application and a friend of mine has asked for an
>> api.  I don't know much about this subject though rest looks understandable.
>> Any suggestions for something to read?  All clues welcome.
>
> REST should be fine.  I may be old school, but I personally would
> consider implementing a REST API to be "making it fancy".  When I
> write one-off web apps and I want to add an API, I just publicly
> expose some of the functionality (with proper security measures in
> place, of course) via a page that expects a POST and which returns
> some formatted text.  For example if I want an API for a personal
> finance "app" (fancy word for a mish-mash of scripts) I might have the
> following "API calls" (really just web pages that are more
> programmer-friendly):
>
> - login.php: post credentials to this to get authenticated
> - transaction.php: you can POST to this with a couple of fields that
> define the transaction amount, a short description and optionally a
> category.  It prints out a simple success or failure message.
> - balance.php: GET only, returns your current balance as an integer in text form
>
> If I'm already using these filenames for the "normal" UI then I might
> prepend them with api_.
>
> -Dan

Thanks for the info Dan.  Think this is the way I'll go.

- Eric