The Costs and Benefits of Building Hypermedia APIs (with Node.js)

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Mike Amundsen
The Costs and Benefits of
Building Hypermedia APIs
(with Node.js)

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Mike Amundsen
Author
Presenter
Software Explorer
Principal API Architect

OK, let’s get started…

Theonia
"a looking at, viewing, beholding”

Theory
"a looking at, viewing, beholding”

Praxis
“doing”

Practice
“doing”

First, a lesson to remember
from Donald Norman…

Affordances
“The value of a well-designed object,
Is when it has such a rich set of affordances,
That the people who use it,
Can do things with it,
That the designer never imagined.”
- Donald Norman

Affordances
- Donald Norman

Some background…

Affordances
The foundation for perception is ambient,
ecologically available information.
Affordances are all "action possibilities" latent in
the environment.
Theory of Affordances, 1979
- James J. Gibson

Seven Stages of Action
Affordances
The Design of Everyday Things, 1988
- Donald Norman

Affordances
Knowledge (“head” vs. “world”)
April 17, 2012 APIs to Affordances : WS-REST 2012 18
Property
Knowledge in the
World
Knowledge in the Head
Learning
Learning not required.
Interpretation
substitutes for learning.
How easy it is to
interpret information is
the world depends
upon how well it
exploits natural
mappings and
constraints.
Requires learning, which
can be considerable.
Learning is made easier if
there is meaning of
structure to the material (or
if there is a good mental
model).
Efficiency
of use
Tends to be slowed up
by the need to find and
interpret the external
information.
Can be very efficient
Ease of use
at first
encounter
High Low

Affordances
"Hypermedia is defined by the presence of application
control information embedded within, or as a layer above,
the presentation of information“ (2001)
“When I say [Hypermedia], I mean the simultaneous
presentation of information and controls such that the
information becomes the affordance through which the user
obtains choices and selects actions” (2008)
Architectural Styles and the Design
of Network-based Software, 2001
- Roy T. Fielding

Affordances
Affordances
make
Hypermedia
possible.

Affordances
Hypermedia
can provide a
Rich Set of Affordances

Maze+XML
Design #1:
A big pile of Affordances

Maze+XML
Maze+XML media type
First design in late 2010, registered w/ IANA 2011
“…an XML data format for sharing maze state information
between clients and servers. It can be used to implement
simple mazes, adventure games, and other related data.”
Read-only navigational links
Nine link identifiers:
collection, maze, start, exit, current,
north, south, east, west

Maze+XML
Message

Maze+XML
Server

Maze+XML
Client

Maze+XML
Client Code

Maze+XML
In the wild…

Maze+XML
Darrel Miller
“A good example of using link relations to convey
domain specific semantics.”
“Has been a good test bed for trying to develop a UI
transparently that tracks the state of the user agent as it
navigates between representations.”

Maze+XML
Darrel Miller – C#

Yannick Loiseau
“I can say that a non-restful architecture would have been a
lot harder to deal with in bash, because hypermedia
obviously made the maze exploration really easy”
“I think that Link headers would be even
easier to deal with…”
Maze+XML

Yannick Loiseau - Python
Maze+XML

Yannick Loiseau - Bash
Maze+XML

Maze+XML
Characteristics
- Read-Only navigational links
- Limited set of identifiers
- Domain specific
Benefits
- Simple, direct design
- Easy to create servers/clients
- M2M works when algorithm is available
Costs
- Limited reach
- M2M clients challenge evolvability

H-Factors
“Pardon me, did you say ‘links’?”

“The H Factor of a media-type is a measure of the
level of hypermedia support within that media-type.”
“H Factor values can be used to compare and
contrast media types in order to aid in selecting the
proper media-type(s) for your
implementation.”
H-Factors
REST: From Research to Practice :
Hypermedia Types, 2011
- Mike Amundsen

H-Factors
Analyzing Media Types

H-Factors

H-Factors
There are five LINK Factors
(LO, LE, LT, LI, LN)
There are four CONTROL Factors
(CR, CU, CM, CL)

H-Factors
(CR, CU, CM, CL)

H-Factors
Linking
Outbound Links (LO)

H-Factors
Linking
Embedded Links (LE)

H-Factors
Linking
Templated Links (LT)

H-Factors
Linking
Idempotent Links (LI)

H-Factors
Linking
Idempotent Links (LI)
Non-Idempotent Links (LN)

H-Factors
(CR, CU, CM, CL)

H-Factors
Control
Request Controls (CR)

H-Factors
Control
Update Controls (CU)

H-Factors
Control
Method Controls (CM)

H-Factors
Control
Method Controls (CM)
Link Controls (CL)

H-Factors
A pre-defined collection of H-Factors is called a
“Media Type”
Each media type has it’s own “H-Factor” signature.

H-Factors
H-Factors document
the Affordances
of the
Media Type

H-Factors
“OK, media types, affordances, I see…

Collection+JSON
Design #2:
A read/write hypermedia type

Collection+JSON
Collection+JSON media type
First designs in early 2011, registered w/ IANA mid 2011
“…a JSON-based read/write hypermedia-type designed to
support management and querying of simple collections.”
It’s Atom w/ LT + templated writes
Very limited link identifiers
- collection, item, templates, query

Message
Collection+JSON

Server
Collection+JSON

Client Code
Collection+JSON

Client App
Collection+JSON

Collection+JSON
In the wild…

Collection+JSON
Nokia Research - Live Mixed Reality - Vlad Stribu
“[Collection+JSON] … allows us to develop authoring tools
that have the ability to self-adapt the user interface to the
usage context.”

Collection+JSON
Nokia Research - Live Mixed Reality - Vlad Stribu
“Collection+JSON was close enough to what we were
looking for…”
“Most important factor that influenced our decision was the
community around this format…”

Collection+JSON
CloudApp – Larry Marburger
“CloudApp allows you to share images, links, music, videos
and files.”
“[Due to developer team changes] we had some setbacks
with the Mac app and subsequently the API. We just started
working with another developer who's making amazing
progress.”

Collection+JSON
ember.js – Yehuda Katz
“A framework for creating ambitious applications.”
“By default, it's somewhat repetitive, but that can be
addressed…”
“It was straight-forward to extend it with features I needed”
“I am starting to feel like with the number of extensions, I
should consider [creating] my own media type.”

Collection+JSON
Characteristics
- Read/Write w/ Templates
- Small set of link identifiers
- General “List Domain” handler
Benefits
- Limited design means simple parser
- Servers easy, clients harder
- Built-in support for custom domain annotations
Costs
- Domain mapping is more difficult
- M2M clients limited to pre-declared vocabulary

Affordance Aspects
“So, are all affordances essentially
the same?”

Affordance Aspects
“For the purposes of applying affordances to
hypermedia, there are four important aspects
to consider”

Affordance Aspects
Safe
The HTTP protocol supports a number of "safe"
actions such as HEAD, and GET.

Affordance Aspects
Safe
The HTTP protocol supports a number of "safe"
actions such as HEAD, and GET.
The HTTP methods PUT, POST, and DELETE are
categorized as "unsafe" actions.

Affordance Aspects
Idempotent
When an HTML:FORM element has the METHOD
property set to "get" it represents an idempotent
action.

Affordance Aspects
Idempotent
When an HTML:FORM element has the METHOD
property set to "get" it represents an idempotent
action.
When the same property is set to "post" the
affordance represents a non-idempotent action.

Affordance Aspects
Mutability
HTML:FORM affords mutability

Affordance Aspects
Mutability
HTML:FORM affords mutability
HTML:LINK is immutable

Affordance Aspects
Transclusion
HTML:IMG affords transclusion

Affordance Aspects
Transclusion
HTML:IMG affords transclusion
HTML:A does not

Affordance Aspects
However, this single affordance is not
very usable.

Affordance Aspects
Media types
should be
usable

Affordance Aspects
Messages
should be
usable

Affordance Aspects
APIs
should be
usable

ALPS for HTML
Design #3:
Aspects, Factors, Abstractions

ALPS for HTML
ALPS profile URI
First designs in early 2011 (not registered)
“The purpose of Application-Level Profile Semantics (ALPS)
is to document the application-level semantics of a particular
implementation.”
“The example profile here contains details
on customizing the XHTML media type
for a specific application domain:
Micro-blogging.”

ALPS for HTML
ALPS profile URI
Multiple parties building their own client or server
applications without seeing each other's work or accessing a
running "reference" implementation.
Developers are expected to rely on the constraints and
definitions found in this document (and the referenced
RFCs) as the sole instruction.

ALPS for HTML
Messages

ALPS for HTML
Server Code

ALPS for HTML
Client Code

ALPS for HTML
Client App

ALPS for HTML
Client Bot

ALPS for HTML
“In the wild…”

ALPS for HTML
Rstat.us – Carol Nichols
“There are two things that make rstat.us special: simplicity
and openness.”
“[S]ince we already have a full-functioning end-user facing
site, the ALPS microblogging spec means adding a few
attributes rather than having to maintain a totally separate
API interface.”
“The current way of
presenting the ALPS
spec is [too] flat.”

ALPS for HTML

ALPS for HTML
Characteristics
- Domain Semantics Only
- Media-type agnostic
Benefits
- Focused on problem domain
- Treats “pages” as the “API”
Costs
- Very abstract model
- Tough to document
- Seems “over complex” esp. for M2M cases

ALPS for HTML
“If HTML is not the only media-type
we need…”

ALPS for HTML
“How do you choose?”

Methodology
Mapping your domain to HTTP

Designing messages is the primary work
Focus on mapping to payloads, not identifiers
Survey existing media types first
If you can’t find a suitable H-Factor signature
match, consider designing your own.
Pro Tip: you can always find a match.
Methodology

Start with a format (XML, JSON, HTML, etc.)
You might need to support more than one
Don’t assume you can “cross-map” formats easily
Pro Tip: you almost always need to support more
than one.
Methodology

Select your other design elements as needed
Methodology

Represent State, not Objects
Remember both data and transitions
Craft lots of messages
Pro Tip: you can never have enough messages
Methodology

When you are sure you have:
The proper format
The right H-Factor signature
The correct mapping of domain to messages
Sufficent message examples
Then, and only then…
Methodology

You can start writing
the code
Methodology

Because…
Methodology

The code is only
the implementation
Methodology

The code is only
the implementation
The media type is
the design.
Methodology

And if you get the design
right...
Methodology

Your users will be able
to do things
Methodology

to do things
Methodology

to do things
you never imagined
Methodology

Mike Amundsen
The Costs and Benefits of
Building Hypermedia APIs
(with Node.js)
@mamund

The Costs and Benefits of Building Hypermedia APIs (with Node.js)

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