Ryan Tomayko

What really happens when you navigate to a URL —

“The facebook server responds with a permanent redirect”

Message: Re: [rest-discuss] REST-* —

Whoa. There’s some serious shit poppin' off on the rest-discuss mailing list lately. Here’s Roy Fielding (completely out of context):

Quite frankly, this is the single dumbest attempt at one-sided “standardization” of anti-REST architecture that I have ever seen. It even manages to one-up the previous all-time-idiocy of IBM when they renamed their CORBA toolkit “Web Services” in a deliberate attempt to confuse customers into thinking they had something to do with the Web.

It doesn’t get any better from there :) I saw the REST-* site a few weeks ago but I (literally) thought it was a joke site. The sad thing is that, if the past is a predictor of the future, Jboss/Redhat will probably be able to convince a large chunk of enterprise IT managers that they are REST.

Common HTTP Implementation Problems, W3C Note —

Interesting W3C Note from January 2003 that I don’t remember ever seeing:

HTTP and URIs are the basis of the World Wide Web, yet they are often misunderstood, and their implementations and uses are sometimes incomplete or incorrect. This document tries to improve this situation by providing a set of good practices to improve implementations of HTTP and related standards (Web servers, server-side Web engines), as well as their use.

The information here is relevant to people who build web apps, not HTTP server implementors — the title is a bit misleading (not actually but practically). I especially like this bit about why short, less meaningful URLs are better than verbose, descriptive URLs. Shortness has become the most important characteristic of URL design in most apps I’ve built recently; SEO be damned.

What Works: The Web Way vs. The Wave Way —

The Google Wave demo blew me away but I think Anil gets a lot right here. If the past is a good predictor of the future, Wave is a little too orphaned, a little too complex, and doing a little too much to be adopted quickly on any kind of large scale.

RabbitHub - RabbitMQ PubSub-over-Webhooks —

Tony’s simple HTTP interface to RabbitMQ. Somebody get this running as a service on EC2 so we can hook Heroku apps up to it on the private network.

Stefan Tilkov's REST Book: References —

Whoa. How do I get my hands on an english copy?

Rack 1.0 released! —

We made it.

Mark Nottingham's HTTP Status Report presentation at QCon '08 —

Protocols are hard. Nobody understands this.

Ryan Tomayko on the Ruby on Rails Podcast —

Geoffrey Grosenbach interviewed me yesterday for the Ruby on Rails podcast. We had a nice chat about Python/WSGI, Rack, Sinatra, Rack::Cache, Heroku, and other random stuff.

It's OK for GET Requests to Update the Database —

True! A lot of cargo-cult types get this wrong.

Resourceful —

Interesting looking HTTP client library for Ruby with support for HTTP caching (with pluggable backends), basic and digest auth, intelligent redirect handling. It’s been around for a while and looks like it could eventually become similar in feature set to Python’s httplib2.

CloudKit via cURL —

Jon Crosby’s RESTful JSON-based data store with OpenID and OAuth support. It does versioning and produces HTTP cache friendly responses all in a Rack middleware component. Jon’s been working on this for some time and it shows in the code and docs. Awesome.

Concluding Remarks —

Jean-Jacques Dubray: “How do the RESTafarians work? They take Roy’s REST, they try to use it for anything in their day to day activities, and then when they stumble upon a problem, they try to find a more or less ‘RESTful’ solution and post it on a blog.”

Precisely!

What I Believe Roy Said —

Paul Downey translates Dr. Fielding’s REST APIs Must be Hypertext Driven into lay-hacker speak.

An Introduction to REST —

Joe Gregorio’s 14 minute video introduction to REST and HTTP.

alan.dean's REST Bookmarks on Delicious —

Alan Dean has bookmarked over 100 REST related articles in the past two days (and 757 all time). For comparison, I’ve been bookmarking REST related articles since July 2004 and have a total of 107 bookmarks. It appears that Dean is shooting for a comprehensive list of every resource related to REST ever posted on the web.

Explaining REST to Damien Katz —

Dare Obasanjo is a machine.

REST in the front, RPC in the back —

Assaf Arkin: “There’s also some back-end processing going on, and I think that part is using DRb for now. But maybe the next update it will switch over to RMI or UNIX pipes or whatever. I don’t much care because the library does the talking, and besides, it’s only distributed in the sense that we have two pieces of code running with different PIDs. Not particularly important what’s happening on the wire, as long as it’s fast.”

REST as an engineering discipline —

Bill de hÓra knocks one out of the park: “I think sometimes that the problem people have with REST is that it’s so well-defined; it’s not witchcraft, it’s not a cargo cult. You can’t argue with it on a relativistic basis or apply clever rhetoric or continuously redefine what it means. An architectural style isn’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – you have to decide if it’s the right fit for your problem space and if not, you have to come up with a more appropriate one.”

Don't Fear the URLs —

Adam Wiggins on Sinatra’s blasphemous approach to controllers and routing. AKA: the thing that makes Sinatra my web layer of choice (well, that and throw :halt).

Patterns of Web Architecture —

An all around great post from Bill de hÓra. Wow.

beyond rest —

joshua schachter on Rabble/Kellan’s “Beyond REST?” presentation, with an interestingly simple HTTP-based callback system.

Apache 3.0 (a tall tale), Roy Fielding —

Nice ApacheCon EU ‘08 presentation (warning: video + slides, no transcript) covering various blue sky stuff on Roy’s brain for Apache and HTTP.

REST: Reducing Effort in Script-based Testing —

Boo! Horrible name collision imminent. Is REST really that unknown or do they just not care?

A run-time for “the New Reality” —

“… the ‘new reality’ is the realization that Dynamic Scripting Languages are ready for prime-time and that REST is a simple, yet scalable architecture to build a servers on.” – I’d say that’s definitely a new reality for the enterprise, Bill.

On software architecture —

Roy Fielding on the difference between architecture, architecural styles, patterns, implementations, and applications.

Addressing Doubts about REST —

Stefan Tilkov addresses some of the most common doubts people have when first deprogram and come up to speed on REST. Short and well done, IMO. I think I’ll be handing this out quite a bit in the future.

The Technology Rejection Curve —

Joe Gregorio: “This is what I call the ‘Scooby-Doo’ phase of the technology rejection curve, where the rubber mask has been ripped off and the crook yells as he’s dragged off by the cops […]”

Hypermedia WTF! —

“… there’s a sub-constraint that goes by the unwieldly name of ‘Hypermedia as the engine of application state’, which is arguably the most important constraint of REST in the sense that it alone provides the bulk of the ‘shape’ of RESTful systems …”

Websphere CTO Jerry Cuomo on REST & Project Zero —

Whoa. I apparently haven’t spent nearly enough time looking into IBM’s Project Zero. It seems to come down to REST + (Groovy|PHP) and sneaking practical technologies in the front door with a “SOA” label on it. Interesting strategy.

Do we need WADL? —

Ka-pow!

Myth: RESTful Web Services Don't Need an Interface Definition Language —

Dare weighs in on the usefulness of description languages in REST-based design and seems to conclude that Uniform Interface != Description Language and that simple discovery ( style) is the appropriate comparison.

Lying Through Their Teeth: Easy vs. Simple —

Steve Vinoski compares IDL as used w/ CORBA/DCOM with WSDL as used by WS-*. It’s interesting that IDL served as more than just a description for machines. Humans used IDL as spec text and built services accordingly, just like REST :)

A RESTful version of Amazon's SimpleDB —

That’s much nicer. Amazon should adopt it immediately.

A Brief Introduction to REST —

Stefan Tilkov’s latest InfoQ article covers all the key concepts…

Google Chart API Developer's Guide —

I would use this ASAP if not for the privacy requirements around the data I’m charting. There’s really no good general purpose graphing libraries that use nice and simple vector shapes and styles.

Changeset 8180 - Rails Trac - Trac —

“Ousted ActionWebService from Rails 2.0 ” :)

WS-* is to REST as Theory is to Practice —

Dare talks about his transition from WS-* to REST proponent. This mirrors a lot of people’s experience, including my own.

RESTafarian SOA killers? —

“We (the RESTafarians) are not stubborn zealots. We’re just right. Sorry :–)”

Ian Bicking: Prism —

“… if all you can think of is reasons why the web is stupid and awkward, and you think it’s some giant step backward (from what?), then you haven’t thought very deeply about what’s happened in the world of technology and why.”

The ESB Question —

This is a scary description of a small chunk of my tech career: “In a previous life, I helped develop ESBs. I’ve written about them and I’ve promoted them. But somewhere along the way, I lost the religion.”

Rails 2.0: Preview Release —

“… Rails has picked a side in the SOAP vs REST debate. Unless you absolutely have to use SOAP for integration purposes, we strongly discourage you from doing so. As a naturally extension of that, we’ve pulled ActionWebService from the default bundle.”

The Rest of REST —

Slides from the presentation Roy will be giving in about an hour at RailsConf Europe.

A little REST and Relaxation —

How long has this been floating around? Roy Fielding on building the web… (via Aristotle Pagaltzis on rest-discuss)

Twitter API Traffic is 10x Twitter’s Site —

Do not try to measure APIs vs site traffic… that’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth… There is no APIs.

Bill de hÓra: Design for the web —

“… on Java, too many web frameworks – think JSF, or Struts 1.x – consider the Web something you work around using software patterns. The goal is get off the web, and back into middleware…”

Udell Interviews Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby on "RESTful Web Services" —

Ugghh, this is 7 days old now and I still haven’t had a chance to listen… It’s the best interview ever when I imagine it in my head :)

HTTPanties [thinkgeek.com] —

“413 Requested Entity Too Large”

The future is yesterday [plasmasturm.org] —

I saw this same note on rest-discuss the other day and thought it struck a chord. :) Jon Hanna on SOAP, Web 2.0, other stuff…

RESTful Web Services (Paperback) : by Leonard Richardson, Sam Ruby [amazon.com] —

A site for sore eyes :)

Fielding’s Dissertation [docunext.com] —

Section by section interpretation and notes on Fielding’s Disseration on REST.

Squid is My Service Bus [mnot.net] —

Bingo!

Comment j'ai expliqué REST à ma femme [pompage.net] —

“How I explained REST to my wife” in French!

Koranteng's Toli: Crawl Before You Walk —

On JSF: “Waiting 5 years before you adopt the native architecture of the web is almost inexcusable. The web won’t (and didn’t) wait that long.”

ROA Maturity Model —

How did we ever get anything done without superfluous quadrants and models. Bring ‘em on. The trick is making something every developer would know is a joke but that could make it past a manager or architect.

PUT is not UPDATE [cafe.elharo.com] —

Hence the multiple disclaimers in the article, such as, “I hesitated to include this table. … What I don’t want to happen is that you start thinking of web resources as SQL tables. Don’t do that.”

REST Issues, Real and Imagined [mnot.net]

Sun proposes to apply Web service standardization principles to REST —

Elliotte isn’t pulling any punches :)

Making Fedora RESTful —

Wow, I’m surprised I’ve never seen anything about this before.

HTTP/1.1 (DELETE, GET, HEAD, PUT, POST) —

Nice activity diagram describing the resolution of response status codes given various request methods and headers. Full res GIF, JPEG, PNG, and SVG.

Mr. Gosling - why did you make URL equals suck?!? —

Wow. Much worse than I thought.

All Wikipedia Links Are Now NOFOLLOW —

Boo – links are made to be followed.

Are we gonna bash Restlet next? [brandonwerner.com] —

I’ve been meaning to spend some time in Restlet for some time now. Looks like it’s gaining traction with the EE crowd. Err, well, uhh, some of the EE crowd, anyway.

Proposing URI Templates for WebForms 2.0 [whatwg.org] —

Oh, hell yes:

Web APIs Are Just Web Sites —

Well done.

An OpenID is not an account! —

OpenID solves the identity problem, not the trust problem. When a user authenticates with OpenID, what they are doing is stating “I have the ability to prove my ownership of this URL”.

Reinventing the WS Stack —

“Should machine-to-machine, multi-hop, RESTful communications expose a need for additional functionality, then, and only then, will the need be addressed. This is opposed to the WS style of standards creation where solutions are created that go in search

The Role of Resources in REST —

“Each resource demarcates a subset of an application’s state, and becomes a handle by which other applications can interact with that state.”

InfoQ: Interview: Pete Lacey Criticizes Web Services —

Wow, I’m flattered blush Turns out I do know something about SOA after all. Speaking of “Motherhood and Apple Pie” – I quite liked that essay but it was one of those that never really took off.

Socio-political and Commercial Motivations for WS-* —

Nice bit of history showing the chain of events that led to WS-*.

Stefan Tilkov on SOA —

Extremely clear and right take on REST, WS, and other techniques for distributing systems.

The S stands for Simple —

Wonderfully done.

How We Wish Our SOs Really Talked —

“Why would my sister want to borrow someone else’s broom, you sexist ass? My sister is a lawyer for the friggin' ACLU! before tossing her Napa Valley cab in the poor guy’s face.”

The Dining Philosophers in REST —

Great read…

HTTP PUT and GET from emacs —

Yep :)

A Bright, Shiny Service: Sparklines —

Joe Gregorio throws together a RESTful web service for generating sparklines.

Lever and fulcrum —

“Jim Gray reminded me that TerraServer does offer SOAP interfaces. And yet those interfaces demonstrably have not inspired a flurry of innovation. Why not?”

Integrate This —

Looks like an interesting new blog with proper taste for integration technologies. I can’t figure out who it is though…

The wrong end of the telescope? —

You’ll have to excuse my ego linking but having Udell point to you is like have Carson ask you onto the Tonight Show.

PEAR 1.4.0, meet REST 1.0 —

Greg Beaver talks about some of the benefits of REST based design as he’s moving PEAR from XML-RPC to standrad HTTP/URIs/XML.

A REST Intervention —

Koranteng ponders how it is possible for REST based systems to kick so much ass.

Japanese Translation of How I Explained Rest to My Wife —

How cool is that?

What Does SOAP/WS Do that A REST System Can't? —

I didn’t know SOAP/WS systems were so capable. Astounding!

Radical Simplification —

Everything I ever wanted to say about the current state of software development in ~50 slides. Thanks, Sam.

Bowstreet Predicts 2002 Will Be The `Year of Web Services` —

Just for fun :)

Don't throw out the SOAP with the bathwater —

Udell wishes REST and WS-* could get along… The REST people did too – two or three years ago (e.g. Prescod, Baker).

Lesson's learned launching a web service —

Google reflects on some of the decisions made for the AdWords API.

Roots of the REST/SOAP Debate —

Paul Prescod gives some background and opinion on the REST/SOAP debate.

WS-Nothing —

More people coming over to the loyal opposition…

Show Me the Code —

Joe Gregorio’s second installment in his series on building RESTful applications shows us how to build a bookmark service kind of like del.icio.us. He nailed this one really nicely.

SOAP is Comatose But Not Officially Dead! —

Carlos Perez with a nice wrap up of recent WS-* vs. REST discussion around the blogosphere.

SOAP is boring, wake up Big Vendors or get niched —

More reports of shrinking WS-* mindshare and cries for tools for building REST based architecture.

The sad state of SOAP interoperability —

Complexity is kryptonite to interoperability. It’s that simple.

Vonage Third Party Call Control —

Vonage hacking..

WS-Who's-on-First —

Oh, this is brilliant. Look at the bright side, Mark, at least it’s horribly useless in a way that’s interoperable!

REST Intro and Overview —

Paul James wrote this nice technical summary on REST and competing technologies back in September 2004 and I missed it somehow.

Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One —

Finally hits 1.0. If you read one big nasty spec this year, this should be it. It’s actually full of stories and other weird stuff that make portions kind of fun.

The Restful Web —

Joe Gregorio has a new XML.com column called “The RESTful Web” where he just posted his first article. This is great news. No one seems to want to stand up and bring REST to the masses.

httperf - A Tool for Measuring Web Server Performance —

I can finally shelve my bash/curl framework :)

Showing Off —

:) “… it isn’t about REST or SOAP or WS-* or .NET or Java or whatever, it’s about easy.” — Tim Bray

Common REST Mistakes —

Some good tips on building RESTful web services.

Ed, settle down. And please don't call it "WS-mess"... —

… there has been a recent round of “glowing reviews from analysts”. What could possible go wrong?

Bloglines Web Services API Documentation —

A nice, simple HTTP/XML based API for bloglines. I hope this trend continues.

HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication (RFC 2617)

Cool URIs don't change. —

Notes on good URI design.

REST for Quixote —

Some code and theory on developing RESTish stuff under Quixote.

The ‘Web’ in Web Services —

Mark Nottingham wondering why WS-Transfer (HTTP wrapped up in SOAP wrapped up in HTTP bwhhahaha) didn’t get more heat from the opposition.

SOAP Problems —

A big list of problems with the current WS stack. Contains pointers to mailing-list discussion on various issues.

Are Web Services receding? —

Simon St. Laurent noticing the recent WS-Opposition.

A complete guide to WS in one, short paragraph —

Sean McGrath backing Tim Bray on the Loyal WS-Opposition.

WS-Pagecount —

The legs the Loyal WS-Opposition is standing on. (Tim Bray)

Joe Joins Loyal WS-Opposition —

Joe Gregorio on Tim Bray’s “The Loyal WS-Opposition” post. This might end up being a real committee or something.

The Loyal WS-Opposition —

Tim Bray on WS-Sanity: “So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to stay out of the way and watch the WS-visionaries and WS-dreamers and WS-evangelists go ahead and WS-build their WS-future.”

Architecture of the World Wide Web, First Edition —

A beautiful mish-mash of what works on the web. Hits Last Call WD.

Implementing REST Web Services: Best Practices and Guidelines

Paul Prescod's REST Resources —

More in depth info on REST.

Web Service the REST Way —

Good intro to REST.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP 1.1 —

HTTP specification

The del.icio.us REST API —

Will implement pythonic interface to..