ReliefWeb’s Journey from RSS Feed to API

9/26/2014

What is ReliefWeb?

Why does it have an API?

How was it built?

What did it take to open it?

What’s next?

Software Architect & API DesignerEmail: aross@phase2technology.com

Adam Ross

Twitter: @grayside_sb

What is ReliefWeb

• ReliefWeb is a specialized digital service for the

United Nations Office for the Coordination of

Humanitarian Affairs) established in 1996.

• Global staff of 30 content editors aggregating and

curating content on a daily basis for the

Humanitarian sector.

• Over half a million items, growing by tens of

thousands per year, especially in the community-

sourced areas of jobs and training.

RSS Was Not Enough

• “Here are the last 10 things: build your UI”

• Deep integrations are RSS-driven migrations, you need to build an entire application and be responsible for your own scraped copy.

• This means lots of overhead for innovation

So they Made an API and...

• Built a mobile version of the site

• Built a trends & analytics site to

examine what’s going on in the world

across decades

• Building a new search system on top

of the API

Built on Open SourcePHP

nginx

ElasticSearch

Swagger

Composer

Klein

Elastica

Jenkins

... etc

Especially ElasticSearch

• Provides a wealth of search & analysis

functionality for the API.

• Booming community of tools, especially

monitoring.

• Separately scales from main content storage.

• API app focuses on creating a developer

experience.

• Public data, public need, public innovation.

• Already have a webapp, what more could we need?

• (A systematically managed platform.)

Opening the API

API Provider says...Scale

AnalyticsPolicing

API Consumer says...ReliabilityUsability

DocumentationInvested

Usability & Reliability• Hypermedia

• JSON

• CORS (Browser-friendliness)

• Backwards Compatibility a.k.a.

Forwards Compatibility

• Testing (all the ways)

• Getting here is a new version and

over 80% code change

More People Sharing ReliefWeb’s Mission

• Want people to be able to easily

execute on ideas

• There’s not time to spend days or

weeks learning the system.

• Meaningful usage helps fulfill

ReliefWeb’s goals and drives

technology investment.

Roadmap Teaser

• Infrastructure Upgrade to improve Reliability & Scale

• Usage analytics to target improvements and monitor community impact.

• SDK & Web Widgets to facilitate integration

• Geo & Semantic use cases

reliefweb.intapi.rwlabs.org

PHASE2TECHNOLOGY.COM