Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: Remixing Data and Web Services (Expert's Voice in Web Development) (Paperback)

by Raymond Yee (Author)
Key Phrases: virtual earth, saved results, science librarian, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Calendar (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The modern Web is awash with data and services just waiting to be used, but how do you make effective use of all this information? The answer lies in APIs (such as Google Maps, Flickr, and Amazon Web Services) and remixing, or mashups. Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: Remixing Data and Web Services teaches you everything you need to create useful, dynamic real–world applications using APIs, web services, Ajax, web standards, and server–side languages. All you need to make full use of this book is basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and at least one server–side language (such as PHP or ASP.NET).

Highlights include the following:

• Looks at the overall shape of todays Web from a developers point of view—what are its main features, and what is available for us to use to develop applications?
• Contains real–world examples of creating mashups using all the major APIs.
• Contains examples written in multiple server–side languages.

What you’ll learn

• Understand how the constituent parts of the modern Web fit together—web standards, Ajax, APIs, libraries, tagging, blogs, wikis, and more.
• Create different types of mashup, for example mapping mashups, search functionality, calendars, RSS/Atom feeds, social bookmarking, online storage systems, open document formats, and more.
• Build Web 2.0 applications using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, server–side languages, APIs, and libraries

Who is this book for?

This book is for any web developer who is already comfortable with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and at least one server–side language and wants to learn how to create Web 2.0 applications.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

About the Author

Raymond Yee is a data architect, consultant, and trainer. He is currently a lecturer at the School of Information, UC Berkeley, where he teaches the course “Mixing and Remixing Information.” While earning a PhD in biophysics, he taught computer science, philosophy, and personal development to K–11 students in the Academic Talent Development Program on the Berkeley campus. He is the primary architect of the Scholar’s Box, software that enables users to gather digital content from multiple sources to create personal collections that can be shared with others. As a software architect and developer, he focuses on developing software to support learning, teaching, scholarship, and research.

Raymond is an erstwhile tubaist, admirer of J. S. Bach, Presbyterian elder, aspiring essayist, son of industrious Chinese–Canadian restaurateurs, and devoted husband of the incomparable
Laura.

Product Details

• Paperback: 603 pages
• Publisher: Apress (May 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159059858X
• ISBN-13: 978-1590598580
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #70,395 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent! Tour De Force of the subject, April 11, 2008

By	Paris Treantafeles (New York USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Kudos to the author and publisher for this release.
This book is a tour de force of the subject of Mashups.

I was looking for a good book on this subject so that I could introduce it to students as part of an extra-curricular technology program in NYC and this book is perfect.

In a sentence, Mashups are created by taking data from one or more sources and making something new and useful from them.

In my opinion, the subject is very important because there is a vast amount of data that is available now. Today the challenge is not just finding data but putting to use. This book shows you how to do that.

The author's writing style is excellent, mixing theory and applications. The book is filled with hands on examples as well as references for research in each of the areas.

I believe that this book can be read by anyone interested in the subject, regardless of their technical background. For those that want to create Mashups without programming, this book shows you how. For those that want to delve into programming, everything that you need is covered including AJAX, PHP, various data formats and how to parse them, various Javascript libraries and more.

The book is laid out in four parts:

1. Remixing Information Without Programming
As the title suggests, the chapters in this section require no previous programming experience. The author walks through some specific examples, introduces terminology and analyzes how sites like Flickr and del.icio.us work so that you can get the most out of them. Tools such as Yahoo! Pipes (a browser-based visual application for Mashups and Remixing) are explored. Following along with the discussion the reader can put together a Mashup or Remix by simply understanding the concepts and using tools, but not having to delve into coding.

2. Remixing a Single Web Application Using Its API
For the person who wants to code, this part of the book jumps right in discussing the Flickr API, PHP usage, XML processing and more. From there the discussion moves to other APIs and using AJAX/Javascript widgets.

3. Making Mashups
This section starts by delving into the ProgrammableWeb website. Showing how to find what resources are available, studying existing Mashups via which APIs they use and how to go about creating new ones. From there XMLHttpRequest and Javascript libraries such as YUI are covered and a step-by-step example is given using the previously discussed techniques. Lastly, the author addresses issues around implementing Mashups on your site including standards, accessibility and your own API. I was glad to see these topics covered as sometimes in the haste of getting something online, they can be overlooked.

4. Exploring Other Mashup Topics
This final section of the book covers a large range of interesting topics such as Map-based Mashups, Social Bookmarking, Calendars, Online Storage, Desktop and Office Suites, Embeddable Data Formats and Searches.

As you can see, there's a lot of information covered in this book. In my opinion, everything that one could want on the subject and written in such a way that you want to keep reading, exploring and creating your own Mashups.

I highly recommend this book - so far, it has been my favorite read of 2008!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Introduction To Mashups and Web Services, July 28, 2008

By	Dean Rodina (Georgetown, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

An excellent, up-to-date (2008) book on mashups including: a workmanlike overview of the components with real exercises, details of the services, list of leading websites supporting mashups with specific interactions/examples of several, resource links, etc. A common thread through the book is using Flickr services, which makes sense as a learning exercise -- theirs is a widely used and robust set of features and services. While I could actually care less about interacting with Flickr, it was a good learning tool, and if by chance you do want to use Flickr in your mashups, then order the book right now.

One point, though, is that while the author tries to speak to all levels of web developer, that doesn't succeed so well -- the topic is really pretty advanced for beginners. Though anyone can glean useful knowledge, this is really a book for mid-level and above developers. If your exposure to websites is limited to Photoshop and Dreamweaver, this is probably not the best book for you.

I use (mostly) PHP now (formerly Java and before that C++ and before that you don't want to know), and there were a lot of PHP-specifics (though not exclusive), which I appreciated. The scattered resource links were invaluable. I tend to be submerged in my own field, and don't have the time to keep up with every trend, and this book pointed out several sites/tools that are apparently widely known and used, but with which I was unfamiliar.

Excellent job.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive review of Mashups with lots of examples, April 7, 2008

By	J. Friedman "just introduced to mashups" (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the type of book that you can either skim and get ideas from or sit down at a computer and work through all of the examples. The material is presented clearly and thoroughly illustrates different types of mashups. The book discusses how to use Yahoo Pipes and Google Mashup Editor, their respective map API's along with manipulating Flickr properties and API's. Integrating feeds and blogs into mashups are also described. Though not required, a reader would understand more of the book with some background in languages like javascript, php, and of course xml/html.