REST and Python Posted on | September 29, 2008 | 16 Comments As I mentioned here, recently I’ve been doing some research in REST. Specifically, I’ve been looking for ways to implement REST web services for some of our Python-based routines. The idea is to do it in a way that is describable in a WSDL, so that we can control that from a workflow engine in the future. If you are more or less in the same boat, here is some recommendations to ease your research. First, read the basics: You’d need to find out if you just need to publish your services, or if you also need to consume other people’s services, or both. For us, we need to both publish and consume services. Routes Manual, the routing system of PylonsPylons REST decorators – How to map different HTTP verbs to different actions If frameworks is to limiting, and you would like to roll your own REST publishing engine, look at the following: Selector – A python WSGI routing systemYaro – A simple but non-restrictive WSGI abstractor for end user Good luck!
The Best Project Management Software: 50 Tools for Team Task Management To-do lists alone aren't enough to send a man to the moon, build a pyramid, and create the device you're reading on right now. Humanity's greatest achievements—and your next project—need a workflow, a way to break a project up into achievable chunks, make sure each part is completed in a consistent manner, and ship the finished project on time. That's what project management apps are for. They're tools to break your project down into achievable steps and give your team a workflow to turn the ideas into reality. Over the past four months, we've tested more than 75 project management tools. These systems come in every shape and size, from simple team task management apps to advanced collaboration software that combine hundreds of tools into one. After an exhaustive look at the top project management software, we've pared down the field to 50 apps across four categories, from core project management to customizable project tools. Download Zapier's Project Management App Cheat Sheet Asana Aha!
Bill de hÓra: Patterns of Web Architecture Eric Newcomer: "This afternoon I finally caught up up on Steve Vinoski's recent article and blog entries about the "evils" of RPC. If you aren't already among those who have read them thoroughly, I'd encourage you to. Including the comments, it's one of the best discussions of the merits and demerits of RPC and REST that I've ever seen. The core of his argument is that the RPC abstraction is not helpful - in fact the opposite. Explicit programming is preferable when creating distributed applications. As someone in the middle of designing another RPC based system (Distributed OSGi), though, I'd like to weigh in with a few thoughts. ;-) As I've said before, the distributed OSGi design does not really represent a new distributed computing system. Because the design center for OSGi services is the Java interface, RPC or request/response systems are a more natural fit than asynchronous messaging. That's interesting; I didn't know there was a distributed OSGi. REST hype helps no one.
Why REST? Here’s part 7 of the ongoing serialization of Refactoring HTML, also available from Amazon and Safari. Representational State Transfer (REST) is the oldest and yet least familiar of the three refactoring goals I present here. Although I’ll mostly focus on HTML in this book, one can’t ignore the protocol by which HTML travels. That protocol is HTTP, and REST is the architecture of HTTP. (To be pedantic, REST is actually the architectural style by which HTTP is designed.) Understanding HTTP and REST has important consequences for how you design web applications. Although basic static HTML pages are inherently RESTful, most web applications that are more complex are not. FormsUser authenticationCookiesSessionsState These are very easy to get wrong, and more applications to this day get them wrong than right. REST, as implemented in HTTP, has several key ideas. All Resources Are Identified by URLs Do not be afraid of URLs. Google can only index pages that are accessed via GET.
Replacing MyOpenID In September Janrain announced that they were shutting down MyOpenID. Janrain was always one of the biggest OpenID proponents, so them calling it quits is quite significant. For me, this was definitely the last nail in the coffin. MyOpenID will go down February 1st, 2014. Too bad really, because I really liked OpenID from a conceptual perspective, and this blog tells me I’ve been a fan since at least 2006. At the moment you can’t even find the specifications on the OpenID website website without some intense searching, which is a stark contrast from for example OAuth. What now? Even though I wouldn’t recommend anyone building anything new with openid, there’s still a lot of sites that still use it for authentication. MyOpenID provided a way to setup your own domain for authentication, so I used me.evertpot.com for a long time. So I recently discovered IndieAuth, which is a cool authentication provider. To set it up On the domain you own, add the following meta tags: Some issues
Brain.Save() - WCF Web Programming Model Documentation Brain.Save() WCF Web Programming Model Documentation Friday, January 18 2008 - blog I've gotten a lot of requests (internally and externally) for requests for resources on how to use the new WCF Web Programming Model features in .NET 3.5. MSDN has a lot of great content on this stuff, but it's kind of sprinkled around in various places due to the way the MSDN table of contents is laid out. Conceptual Overviews: Class Library Reference (not exhaustive): Configuration Schema: Samples: Tagged as: indigo Steve Maine Designed by Free CSS Templates.
REST - The short version Getting a clear handle on the definition of the REST architectural style can be daunting. While there is no shortage of descriptions available, I did not find many of them helpful at first. Also, as I began talking about REST to colleagues, I often had a difficult time producing clear descriptions for the key points. Over time, however, I sharpened my summary into a version that seemed to make sense to most of my listeners. A definition First, here is a succinct definition of REST from the Conclusions section of Fielding's 2000 dissertation: REST is a coordinated set of architectural constraints that attempts to minimize latency and network communication while at the same time maximizing the independence and scalability of component implementations. As mentioned in the above quote, REST is often described as a set of constraints. And here is each one, in turn: Identification of resources Every interesting resource has its own unique URI. Manipulation of resources through representations
Paul Ford: What is Code? | Bloomberg A computer is a clock with benefits. They all work the same, doing second-grade math, one step at a time: Tick, take a number and put it in box one. Tick, take another number, put it in box two. Tick, operate (an operation might be addition or subtraction) on those two numbers and put the resulting number in box one. Tick, check if the result is zero, and if it is, go to some other box and follow a new set of instructions. You, using a pen and paper, can do anything a computer can; you just can’t do those things billions of times per second. Apple has always made computers; Microsoft used to make only software (and occasional accessory hardware, such as mice and keyboards), but now it’s in the hardware business, with Xbox game consoles, Surface tablets, and Lumia phones. So many things are computers, or will be. When you “batch” process a thousand images in Photoshop or sum numbers in Excel, you’re programming, at least a little. 2.1 How Do You Type an “A”? It’s simple now, right?
Dan Rigsby » REST Services and Metadata Endpoints in WCF REST Services and Metadata Endpoints in WCF Posted by Dan Rigsby on May 29th, 2008 As mentioned in a previous article , there is no defined a way to get metadata about REST based services using webHttpBinding . You can still create a mexHttpBinding endpoint which can be used to represent the structure of the data that the REST service understands. One common tactic to give the REST service some kind of documentation, is to have a "Documentation" or "Help" method on your service that returns a an HTML page as a Stream which describes how to work with the REST service (as seen in pictureservices ). Example Lets look at an example of the "Documentation" method on a REST service. The operation to look at is "GetDocumentation". [OperationContract] [WebGet(UriTemplate = "help" )] Stream GetDocumentation(); The implementation of this is pretty straight forward.
REST API Design: Invent Media Types, Not Protocols and Understan Early this week, Roy Fieldings wrote a post entitled REST APIs must be hypertext-driven where he criticized the SocialSite REST API (a derivative of the OpenSocial REST API) for violating some constraints of the Representational State Transfer architectural style (aka REST). Roy's key criticisms were API designers, please note the following rules before calling your creation a REST API: … … A REST API should spend almost all of its descriptive effort in defining the media type(s) used for representing resources and driving application state, or in defining extended relation names and/or hypertext-enabled mark-up for existing standard media types. Any effort spent describing what methods to use on what URIs of interest should be entirely defined within the scope of the processing rules for a media type (and, in most cases, already defined by existing media types). [Failure here implies that out-of-band information is driving interaction instead of hypertext.]
Microsoft drops unlimited OneDrive storage after people use it for unlimited storage A little over a year ago, Microsoft announced that paid Office 365 Home and Personal subscribers would get, as part of their subscription, unlimited cloud storage on its OneDrive service. Yesterday, the company announced that it wasn't going to do that after all. It turns out that if you offer unlimited storage to people, a few of them actually take you at your word and trust that you are truly offering unlimited storage, and then they start using it. Explaining the backtracking, the new blog post complains that a small number of paying customers were using OneDrive to store backups of multiple PCs and large collections of movies and TV shows. Instead, paid users will now receive only 1TB of storage, a reversion to the service's previous limit. Paying users not happy at the reduction in storage will be offered pro-rated refunds. This change is frankly rather alarming. This isn't the only way that Microsoft has made OneDrive less attractive over the last few months, either.
A Brief Introduction to REST You may or may not be aware that there is debate going on about the “right” way to implement heterogeneous application-to-application communication: While the current mainstream clearly focuses on web services based on SOAP, WSDL and the WS-* specification universe, a small, but very vocal minority claims there’s a better way: REST, short for REpresentational State Transfer. In this article, I will try to provide a pragmatic introduction to REST and RESTful HTTP application integration without digressing into this debate. I will go into more detail while explaining those aspects that, in my experience, cause the most discussion when someone is exposed to this approach for the first time. Key REST principles Most introductions to REST start with the formal definition and background. Give every “thing” an ID I’m using the term “thing” here instead of the formally correct “resource” because this is such a simple principle that it shouldn’t be hidden behind terminology. Link things together