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Discussion on: A brief history of Web APIs

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david_j_eddy profile image
David J Eddy

Man, a topic I can talk about for hours (and spent years involved in)! Thanks Mike.

"...led to a gradual shift from XML to JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) as the data format of choice. The acronym however, has stuck."

I also wondered why the acronym never changed.

"Once common, a web site which combined content or data from more than one "Web 2.0" source was known as a "Mash-up". Though this term has largely fallen out of use, remnants of this terminology can still be seen in organisation names such as Mashable (now part of Tibco) and Mashape."

I remember Yahoo had a application you could mix and match different queries and data sources into a mashable news feed like dashboard. For the life of me I can not remember what it was called.

Side note: I'd like to point out that Roy T. Fielding doctoral dissertation was published a hole 5 years BEFORE AJAX. Conceptually making REST an older tech than AJAX. Just food for thought.

"...REST is not a standard with which you must comply, nor should it be seen as the one true path."

I am guilty of pushing to stay as close to the spec as possible. In recent years (and a number of projects) I've come to be a bit more flexible...when it makes sense.

Thank you again Mike, great article. I look forward to the next one.

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subnetmarco profile image
Marco Palladino • Edited

Yahoo Pipes of course :)

Microsoft also had a product called Popfly that competed with Yahoo Pipes.

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mikeralphson profile image
Mike Ralphson

Thanks, will respond to your detailed points when I'm back at a computer.

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mikeralphson profile image
Mike Ralphson

Yes, Yahoo Pipes is a fond memory for many (though I never used it at the time). I think there might be open-source reimplementations of it - may be worth checking out alternativeto.net/software/yahoo-p...

I make reference to Fielding's dissertation being from 2000, but adoption of REST really picked up around 2007, some time after AJAX was coined.

I am guilty of pushing to stay as close to the spec as possible

When you say "spec", what do you mean? There is no REST specification, REST is just a set of constraints (one optional) by which you can recognise whether a web API leverages the HTTP protocol in the way Fielding intended.