Comments on: Web apps need scriptable interfaces http://blog.mauveweb.co.uk/2006/11/01/web-apps-need-scriptable-interfaces/ experiments in contemporary web development Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:18:27 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: mauve http://blog.mauveweb.co.uk/2006/11/01/web-apps-need-scriptable-interfaces/#comment-88 mauve Tue, 07 Nov 2006 14:18:39 +0000 http://blog.mauveweb.co.uk/2006/11/01/web-apps-need-scriptable-interfaces/#comment-88 Yes, that's true, I suppose, but not really what I'm getting at. I'm focusing on web applications installed on Linux because that's the problem domain I've been facing. The big Web 2.0 sites realise that people want APIs, but they are not open-source and their databases are not accessible to their users in any other way. Those huge databases are the one asset that differentiates them from locally-installed software that does much the same thing so freedom for user to work with them really builds their strength. Besides, if they don't offer them as APIs, users will write flaky screen-scraping APIs to do the same thing but using more bandwidth. Open-source LAMP web apps have evolved a very formulaic structure. A design pattern. Or maybe an antipattern? There's no justification that these patterns solve anything other than constraints imposed by LAMP (mainly MySQL and PHP). Yes, that's true, I suppose, but not really what I'm getting at. I'm focusing on web applications installed on Linux because that's the problem domain I've been facing. The big Web 2.0 sites realise that people want APIs, but they are not open-source and their databases are not accessible to their users in any other way. Those huge databases are the one asset that differentiates them from locally-installed software that does much the same thing so freedom for user to work with them really builds their strength.

Besides, if they don't offer them as APIs, users will write flaky screen-scraping APIs to do the same thing but using more bandwidth.

Open-source LAMP web apps have evolved a very formulaic structure. A design pattern. Or maybe an antipattern? There's no justification that these patterns solve anything other than constraints imposed by LAMP (mainly MySQL and PHP).

]]> By: sil http://blog.mauveweb.co.uk/2006/11/01/web-apps-need-scriptable-interfaces/#comment-87 sil Tue, 07 Nov 2006 12:55:35 +0000 http://blog.mauveweb.co.uk/2006/11/01/web-apps-need-scriptable-interfaces/#comment-87 There are some apps that have APIs, and most web APIs have Python bindings: Python Flickr API: http://beej.us/flickr/flickrapi/ Python Google API: http://pygoogle.sourceforge.net/ and so on... There are some apps that have APIs, and most web APIs have Python bindings:

Python Flickr API: http://beej.us/flickr/flickrapi/
Python Google API: http://pygoogle.sourceforge.net/

and so on…

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