RESTful or RESTless Current State of Today's Top Web APIs

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1 RESTful or RESTless Current State of Today's Top Web APIs Frederik Buelthoff, Maria Maleshkova AIFB, Karlsruhe Ins-tute of Technology (KIT), Germany [1]

2 Growing Number of Web APIs

3 Challenges Scalability Automa-on Managing complexity???

4 Web API Descrip-ons Service Oriented Compu-ng II SS 2014

5 What is a Web API???? No established defini-on REST principles as founda-on à Web API Survey

6 Survey Setup h`p:// Conducted during December 2013/January 2014 Single domain expert 45 Web APIs Use number of mashups as a metric for the popularity of the Web API (biased towards older APIs) Alexa.com rank and number of tagged ques-ons on StackOverow.com Amazon Product Advertising, Amazon S3, BitBucket, Azure (Blob Service), Balanced Payments, Bing Maps REST Services, Bitly, Box, del.icio.us, Disqus, DocuSign Enterprise, Dropbox (Core API), ebay (Shopping API), Etsy, Eventful, Facebook (Graph API), Flickr, Foursquare, Freebase (Search/Reconcile), Geonames, GitHub, Google Custom Search, Google Maps APIWeb Services, Google Places API, Groupon, Heroku, Instagram, Last.fm, LinkedIn, OpenStreetMap (Editing API), Panoramio, Paypal, Reddit, Salesforce, Tropo, Tumblr, Twilio, Twitpic, Twitter, Wikipedia/Mediawiki, Yahoo! BOSS, Yahoo! BOSS Geo, Yammer, Yelp, Youtube

com rank and number of tagged ques-ons on StackOverow.com Amazon Product Advertising, Amazon S3, BitBucket, Azure (Blob Service), Balanced Payments, Bing Maps REST Services, Bitly, Box, del.icio.

7 Analyzed Characteris-cs General Web API Informa6on the APIs size in terms of opera-ons, availability of alterna-ve protocols, interface descrip-ons URL and Resource Links URL design, use of links between API resources HTTP Use HTTP methods, support for alterna-ve HTTP methods, use of HTTP error status codes, caching mechanisms Input and Output Data way of transmigng input data, types of input, output formats Security and Policies types of authen-ca-on, limita-ons on usage Common Design Decision how are versioning and the selec-on of the output format realized

use of HTTP error status codes, caching mechanisms Input and Output Data way of transmigng input data, types of input, output formats

8 General Web API Informa-on Measuring size/complexity The majority (62%) of the APIs had between eleven and one hundred opera-ons (38% in the and 24% in the range) Remaining Web APIs equally divided into smaller (less than 11 opera-ons, 20%) and larger (>100 opera-ons, 18%) Only two entries (4%) provided a single opera-on Alterna-ve protocols Only a small percentage (20%) of the Web APIs provided the same service using alterna-ve protocols Flickr is available through SOAP, XML- RPC and REST Interface descrip-ons in a machine- readable format Web APIs (11%) using a custom format, JSON Hyper- Schema, WSDL Links to related resources embedded in the response data of Web APIs (an alterna-ve to interface descrip-ons) available in eight cases (18%)

(20%) of the Web APIs provided the same service using alterna-ve protocols Flickr is available through SOAP, XML- RPC and REST Interface descrip-ons in a machine- readable format Web APIs

9 General Web API Informa-on - Summary Once an HTTP- based Web API is available, providers tend to move away from previous interac-on protocol implementa-ons (e.g. SOAP) Machine- interpretable interface descrip-on formats are rather an excep-on than a rule Most providers s-ll prefer to document APIs directly as part of webpages

SOAP) Machine- interpretable interface descrip-on formats are rather an excep-on

10 URLs and Resource Links HATEOAS in the URL design Design or structure of the URLs remains a good indicator for the type of the Web API. The availability of resource links was previously presented as part of the analysis on interface Web APIs with self links include the URL of resources as part of their representa-on Pagina-on links provide the client with precomposed URLs for paging

The availability of resource links was previously presented as part of the analysis on interface

11 URLs and Resource Links Summary HATEOAS remains one of the most poorly supported constraints of the REST architecture Less than a fioh of the analyzed Web APIs providing links to related resources Notable excep-ons include PayPal and Github

Less than a fioh of the analyzed Web APIs providing links

12 HTTP Use Two most commonly used HTTP verbs are GET and POST The most popular way for indica-ng the HTTP verb is via a query parameter

13 HTTP Use 71% use the HTTP status codes to indicate an error 27% of the Web APIs explicitly state support for caching Test invoca-ons show addi-onal six Web APIs with caching support, without having documented it

14 Input and Output Data Ways for sending the input Type of input As output format Web APIs most commonly (89%) support JSON XML remains the second most used data format (58%)

15 Input and Output Data Summary Preparing the input in the right format requires addi-onal effort There is no general consensus on how to format frequently occurring input (such as date and -me) Manual effort (for service invoca-on and composi-on) JSON and XML the two main established output data formats, with JSON rapidly gaining on importance

input (such as date and -me) Manual effort (for service invoca-on and composi-on)

16 Security and Policies The most common way of iden-fying the client applica-on/user is via an API key Most Web APIs (89%) state and implement rate limita-ons The majority of Web APIs use authen-ca-on Requiring developers to 1) register their applica-on in advance 2) tackle individual authen-ca-on mechanisms OAuth has the poten-al to emerge as universally adopted standard for authen-ca-on

authen-ca-on Requiring developers to 1) register their applica-on in advance 2) tackle individual

17 Common Design Decisions Versioning This was addressed by 73% of the examined Web APIs Way of selec-ng the output format

18 RESTless! Web APIs feature a large amount of heterogeneity Require more manual effort to smooth over differences in implementa-ons Some more understandable concepts (such as using the HTTP verbs) have gained widespread adop-on Other concepts (such as resource linking (HATEOAS)) are hardly ever applied

to smooth over differences in implementa-ons Some more understandable

19 [1] RESTful Java Web Services with NetBeans, Jersey and Tomcat, h`p://vichargrave.com/ ressul- web- service- development- with- netbeans- and- tomcat- tutorial/

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