We've teamed up with James Higginbotham of LaunchAny and Keith Casey of Casey Software to bring you their hand-curated weekly newsletter for API developers. You can subscribe to the API Developer Weekly email newsletter here.
Also, be sure to check out James's and Keith's new book A Practical Approach to API Design on Leanpub. On to the links!
Hot Topics
What we can learn from the Yo API
"We started Yo’ed, a hub entirely written with Golang, which triggers actions when someone Yo’ed an account. While playing around with the API, we also wondered why we were attracted to it in the first place. Having a closer look, we discovered that it has great lessons to teach us!"
API Changelog Aims to Reduce Risk to API Consumer Business Models
"API Changelog provides up-to-the-minute tracking of APIs to ensure that API developer-consumers are alerted to any upgrades or changes to endpoints. Changes to an API can create business risks as the end customer’s experience may be affected if an API being used in an application or aggregation product suddenly becomes inaccessible."
Microsoft Tackles Internet-of-Things With New Data Stream Processing Service
"Microsoft added Event Hubs to its portfolio of messaging services called the Azure Service Bus. Event Hubs is similar to Service Bus Queues and Topics in that it supports first-in-first-out messaging, competing consumer scenarios, and data retention policies. Its client-side cursor, partitioned consumer support, and significant time-based retention options are unique with the Microsoft portfolio."
An API Definition As The Truth In The API Contract
How the API definition, terms of service, and other aspects of an API combine to create a complete API contract and how a machine readable version of this contract is important to provide assurances to API consumers.
Slideshare: Reusable APIs
Mike Amundsen's recent presentation on how to build APIs that are reusable and more machine readable.
Facebook fixes huge API security vulnerability
"Security researcher Stephen Sclafani discovered a massive API-based security vulnerability at Facebook. Facebook's security mistake is one from which all API developers can learn. Most Facebook users were vulnerable to spying, spamming and hacking because of lax security on an old API."
The Business of APIs
The Benefits Of APIs For Transport And Logistics
A look at the recent API momentum in the transportation and logistics sector.
The Real World Cup Winner: APIs
"What was really interesting was how this was truly a, “World Cup powered by APIs.” World Cup organizer FIFA has stated that more than a billion fans worldwide accessed information about the tournament through its digital platforms."
To fight Google and Foursquare, Yelp frees its data
"Get ready to see Yelp reviews all over the web. The local business discovery and review site recently announced a revamped API, which increases the number of calls a third-party app can make to Yelp’s data to 25,000 calls per day, compared to an earlier 100 call limit."
API Development
Hypermedia as the engine of application state, the client-server dance
"We are currently seeing a significant amount of discussion about building hypermedia APIs. However, the server side only plays part of the role in a hypermedia driven system. To take full advantage of the benefits of hypermedia, the client must allow the server to take the lead and drive the state of the client. As I like to say, it takes two to Tango."
Video: Adrian Cockcroft: Migrating to Microservices
A video presentation from Adrian Cockcroft on the strategies, patterns and pathways to perform a gradual migration from monolithic applications towards cloud-based REST microservices.
Create and Host your First Web API with APISpark
A look at the APISpark platform and how to build your first web API in 15 minutes or less.
CORS Makes Your API Portable And Remix-able
"CORS being enabled, is the difference between an API being portable, and remix-able, and it being locked down to its original developer portal."
Cloud Watch (from Cloud Developer Weekly Newsletter)
Amazon's Cloud Is One of the Fastest-Growing Software Businesses in History
"Five billion dollars. That’s how much Amazon.com (AMZN) will rake in from its cloud computing business this year, according to a new estimate from Pacific Crest Securities. If true, it’s an incredible figure. It would mean that Amazon’s cloud revenue shot up 58 percent in a single year, from $3.1 billion in 2013."
Rackspace, battling Amazon, tiers cloud services to show off its strengths
"Facing off against cloud giants AWS, Microsoft and Google, Rackspace regroups in a way it hopes will show off its service and support advantages."
10 Docker Tips and Tricks
"As a Solutions Engineer at Docker Inc., I’ve been able to accumulate all sorts of good Docker tips and tricks. The sheer quantity of information available in the community is pretty overwhelming, and there are a lot of good tips and tricks that can make your workflow easier (or provide a little fun) which you could easily miss."
When do bash init scripts run?
A nice diagram posted to Twitter show when various bash init scripts run.
Recommended Security Setup for AWS
"While we’ve never heard of a security breach inside of AWS itself, there have been numerous incidents of Amazon accounts getting illegally accessed and damaged. When thinking about application and hosting security, it’s important to frame the questions in the right light. Specifically, always use the word when."
Why a Media Giant Sold Its Data Center and Headed to the Cloud
"Condé Nast's CTO says the media company is no longer in the business of maintaining a data center. It has gone 'all-in' on the cloud with Amazon Web Services."
Want to share something?
As always, if you want to chat, share a link, or make a suggestion, feel free to drop us a quick note using Twitter (@launchany and @caseysoftware) or by emailing us at: james@launchany.com.