Web Apps, APIs and Services

Web Applications:

  • Applications deployed on web servers accessed via web browser and coded in a browser supported language (html/css/js)
  • Deployment advantages: web browser ubiquity convenience standards distribution no installs (almost)
  • Development advantages: web standards tools frameworks
  • Web app vs RIAs vs Desktop app
  • Client-side Technologies: HTML/CSS/JS/AJAX Dojo
  • Server-side Technologies: Java Servlets/JSP PHP .NET/ASP Groovy/Grails Ruby/Rails Python/Django Comet(Push AJAX)
  • Web App Servers: Glassfish Tomcat Jetty
  • Tools: Netbeans Eclipse Firefox/Firebug

Web APIs:

  • Set of routines data structures object classes and/or protocols provided by libraries and/or operating system services in order to support the building of applications
  • Can be a web app that exposes its business logic as a set of routines using a development library for the required classes
  • Web APIs are just Web Sites - Paul Downey
  • All the Web APIs for your needs: Programmable Web!

Web Services:

  • Software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network
  • Compared to web apps which support user-to-service interaction web services promote service-to-service interaction by using well-defined interfaces
  • Web services are frequently just Web APIs...
  • SOAP/WSDL vs REST web services
  • Technologies: JAX-WS/Metro and JAX-RS/Jersey
  • Twilio SMS gateway API access is available by request.

Open Lab Tutorials:

REST

 

SOAP

 

More:

 

Open Lab Samples:

  • Pet Catalog REST Web Service and Web App - code / readme
  • Mobile Flickr Java ME App [original] - code / slides / labdoc
  • Mobile Flickr Java ME App [modified for integration with Pet Catalog] - code

 

Open Lab Slides: