Web Hooks

Forging a Personalized Programmable Interconnected InternetRyan TeixeiraBarCamp MiamiFeb 2009

Programmable World of Tomorrow

Give credit where credit is due

Jeff Lindsay

Web Hooks and the Programmable World of Tomorrow on slideshare

Jeff's Lindsay's presentation was great. I wanted to pass this information along so I did a similar presentation at Barcamp Miami.

Traditional Communication

My Bank

Traditional communication was mail and phone.

Personal Computing

Then we had personal comuting.

We Discovered the Internet

That lead us to the Internet.

Email Is Still The Killer App

Now we can send emailYeahWhich meant we could send email. Even after all the advancements, email is still the number one used service on the Internet.

My Bank and I Can Talk

Your balance is low

Email is still the killer appOnline banking

Email notifications

Now I can do online banking. And my bank can send me email notices.

Now I'm Getting Social

What do they all do?

Time went by and we discovered we could be social on the Internet. How do these sites communicate with me?

Send Me Email!

They send me email.

Email Is Great

We Need to Move On

Enough with the email already. It is time to move on.

I Sign Up for a New Service

I have a new service called QUIBLROk Cool. Sign me up.Suppose I sign up for a new service.

Please send it to this URL...I might have some information for you. I'll email it to you.http://ryantxr.appjet.com/hello

And that service want to send me information if they have something of interest to me. I might give them a URL to send the data to.

What is that?It's a PHP script on my web host.What is at that URL? A custom script.

What does that do?Whatever I wantWhat does the URL do you might ask? Anything I want.

The Idea Is Not New

Been doing it for yearsPalPal has been doing this for a while now.

RESTful Web Services

Did not really get popular until it had a name

RESTful web services did not get anywhere until it had a name. We would like Web Hooks to be the same way.

Two Sides of The Same Coin

REST and Hooks are two sides of the same coin.

Feeds Are Everywhere

Everyone is familiar with feeds.

The One Way World of Yesteryear

We have to request the dataThis made sense when desktops were readers and the web was viewed primarily as a content distribution media.

In the world of yesteryear, a desktop app polled the site to get the latest feed.

Web Applications Consume Feeds

In today's world, we have web apps comsuming feeds from other web apps.

Polling Sucks!

Can I have the data?

Here it is

Bored

We all know that polling sucks. It is a constant round of asking for data and sometimes getting a positive answer. Why can't you just tell me when you have some data.

Joshua Schachter Had An Idea

http://joshua.schachter.org/

There are some simple ideas out there. Using HTTP to send some notification data isn't new.

Worked For Paypal

It worked for PayPal.

Proposal

Building on top of suggestions and proposals for mechanisms to notify of page changes via Web Hooks and XMPP, GetPingd proposes mechanisms for subscribing to content change notifications in a generic and standardized way.

Getpingd proposed using standardized mechanisms to get notified of new data.

Consider GNIP

Making data portability suck less.

GNIP takes data in various forms and transfers them to other places using other protocols. It is an Internet protocol converter.

Push Is Good

But that is not the point

Push is good. It is more efficient. But that isn't the point. There's more to this than moving content around.

Once Upon A Time

There was a command line system that let you combine apps together for a greater purpose.

There once was a command line interface. It had various functions you could use to do all sorts of things.

The Key Was Input and Output

ProgramProcessed data comes outRaw data inEach command had an input, some processing, and an output.

We Had All These Programs

They were far more useful when strung together

You could combine them in any way you wanted

These could be strung together to do much more and automate things. They are a great productivity enhancement.

The UNIX Philosophy

Write programs that do ONE THING and do it well

Write programs to work together

Write programs that handle text streams because that is a universal interface

The UNIX philosphy is clear.

Web Apps Can Only Respond

They can respond to us

The can give us information when we ask for it

They generally cannot initiate communication that can be consumed by another app

Web Apps only have one side to this. Their output is the screen they produce. But you cannot feed that into another web app.

They Need Web Hooks

Use the mechanisms the web already has

Use existing protocols

Give them a way to call us (or our apps)

If Web Apps had Web Hooks.

Combine Applications Like UNIX Command Line Apps

We could combine web apps like we combine command line apps. We could make things work together in ways we want them to work.

Imagine Basecamp With Hooks

If Basecamp had hooks

We could make it respond to events in ways that means something to us.

Anything Can Trigger A Handler

Imagine if other things in the world had Web Hooks what could be done.

Back To Github

Github has an interface with Lighthouse

RunCodeRun

Integrates With Github

RunCodeRun does automatic testing. And it integrates with Github to run a set of tests when code is updated.

Service Integration

We are looking for Service Integration

Web Synthesis

This is Web Synthesis

Code as Glue

It is using code as glue.

Separation of Concerns

And there is separation of concerns. Each piece can do what it does best and only worry about how they interface together.

Appjet

Server side Javascript

Create small handlers

Use them as web hooks

Run on Appjet site

Download AppJet and run on your own server

Making a handler should not be that hard. Use Appjet.

It is server side Javascript.

Google App Engine

More complicated than AppJet

Need to know Python

Certainly viable

Google App Engine is a bit more complicated but better at handling more sophisticated applications.

What Else Should Have Web Hooks?

My Bank

Other apps that should have hooks.

RSS As Input

Use RSSFWD so there is no need for polling

RSSFWD converts pull-based RSS into push.

Yahoo Pipes and YQL

Has all the data filtering features

Needs web hooks

Needs an input so data can be pushed to it

Yahoo Pipes and YQL. This has some neat things. However, it is a pull mechanism. You can call it to get data. But you cannot push data to it and have it push data elsewhere.

Forget About Pushing Content

It's All AboutIntegration

Integrating multiple apps is much more powerful than any content

Everyone should use whatever apps they want then integrate them

Enable users to use whatever apps they want and let them combine these apps together.

Web Hooks and Feeds

Web Hooks do not replace feeds

Both a feed and a web hook should be supported

HTTP call backs are not new

Exposing them to users is the concept

Web hooks and feeds are both needed. They serve different purposes.

Web Hooks and XMPP

They are not the same

Web Hooks are simpler

Web Hooks are probably more suited to smaller data that is less frequent

XMPP probably more suited to more data and higher frequency

Use XMPP when necessary. Know when to recognize the need for both.

Is there a standard

Short answer: NO

Perhaps there will be on at some point

On his blog data Feb 20 2009, Jeff said this:

Im not going to assume well know everything about the implications of this mechanism that we can encode them in a document that will either be ignored or adopted by everybody, making it harder to adapt to change. The longer we can put off standardizing, the better.

We don't understand the implications of this mechanism. Standards can wait.

John Udell Envisions the Internet

As a new programming paradigm that takes the whole Internet as its platform

It is really all about using the Internet, or the web as one big coordinated and programmable space.

One More Cool Thing

Here is one more interesting example. It is a Twitter bot that can be used to execute commands.

Thanks

Ryan Teixeiraryant@devsanctum.com

ryantxr

ryantxr

http://devsanctum.com

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