Building Hypermedia APIs with HTML5 and Node [Paperback]

Mike Amundsen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2011

With this concise book, you’ll learn the art of building hypermedia APIs that don’t simply run on the Web, but that actually exist in the Web. You’ll start with the general principles and technologies behind this architectural approach, and then dive hands-on into three fully-functional API examples.

Too many APIs rely on concepts rooted in desktop and local area network patterns that don’t scale well—costly solutions that are difficult to maintain over time. This book shows system architects and web developers how to design and implement human- and machine-readable web services that remain stable and flexible as they scale.

• Learn the H-Factors for representing application metadata across all media types and formats
• Understand the four basic design elements for authoring hypermedia types
• Convert a simple read-only XML-based media type into a successful API design
• Examine the challenges and advantages of designing a hypermedia type with JSON
• Use HTML5’s rich set of hypermedia controls in the API design process
• Learn the details of documenting, publishing, and registering media type designs and link-relation types

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

An internationally known author and lecturer, Mike Amundsen travels throughout the United States and Europe consulting and speaking on a wide range of topics including distributed network architecture, Web application development, Cloud computing, and other subjects. His recent work focuses on the role hypermedia plays in creating and maintaining applications that can successfully evolve over time. He has more than a dozen books to his credit and recently contributed to the book "RESTful Web Services Cookbook" (by Subbu Allamaraju). When he is not working, Mike enjoys spending time with his family in Kentucky, USA.

Product Details

• Paperback: 242 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media (December 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1449306578
• ISBN-13: 978-1449306571
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #565,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

An internationally known author and lecturer, Mike Amundsen travels throughout the United States and Europe consulting and speaking on a wide range of topics including distributed network architecture, Web application development, Cloud computing, and other subjects. His recent work focuses on the role hypermedia plays in creating and maintaining applications that can successsfully evolve over time.

He has more than a dozen books to his credit and recently contributed to the book "RESTful Web Services Cookbook" (by Subbu Allamaraju). He is currently working on a new book on designing and implementing Hypermedia APIs. When he is not working, Mike enjoys spending time with his family in Kentucky, USA.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The definitive guide to hypermedia, January 8, 2012

By 

Glenn Block (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Building Hypermedia APIs with HTML5 and Node (Paperback)

If you are a hypermedia developer you should read this book. If you are building web apis to reach multiple devices then you should read this book. If you are building web apis that will be around for a long time and evolve over many versions, then read this book. Hypermedia systems have been around since the dawn of the web, however they have mainly been HTML pages offered up to a browser agent. It Is extremely rare that you see the usage of hypermedia in web apis / machine to machine scenarios.

Hypermedia is basically a black art that very few folks actually understand. I experienced this first hand as the Program Manager for a new web api framework we were building at Microsoft, as hypermedia was something that we wanted our framework to support. I immediately discovered that there was very little literature on the concept, there was no definitive reference to turn to. The guidance was mainly spread through a set of articles and through thousands of mail threads. Mike is one of the few who actually gets it having many years of experience building such systems. He is one of the foremost experts on the topic. Just head to his blog or the REST discussion list and you'll see this is the case.

This book is important because wIth it Mike lifts the veil of mystery of how to build such systems, taking it from a black art to something broadly available to developers. Mike goes into depth defining what hypermedia is and the different ways it can manifest itself. He describes the different types of hypermedia controls and how best to use them. Mike also pays particular attention to using hypermedia in javascript agents running in the browser, something that is extremely relevant today considering the rise of rich ajax style applications using frameworks like jQuery and extjs. The book is not a book of theory, from start to finish it uses real world examples to illustrate the concepts.

I highly recommend it!