Pre-Fest Workshop - Wednesday, 9/13

This year’s pre-fest workshop will introduce you to the basics of REST, with a combination of fun presentations, discussion, and hands-on hypermedia projects. You’ll come away from the day’s event with a better understanding of REST and hypermedia, the knowledge to build a REST Service and a REST/Hypermedia Client, and a working example of a running REST service and Hypermedia client.

Topics

Fielding’s REST
Hypermedia
APIs
Loose-Coupling
Avoiding Hard Versioning

Desired Outcomes

Understand REST and Hypermedia
Know how to build a REST Service
Know how to build a REST/Hypermedia Client
Know what it takes to build services that can change without breaking clients
Have an example of a running REST service and Hypermedia client

Schedule

This is our starting schedule plan. It’s a work in-progress, so feedback is welcome! Feel free to contribute suggestions by filing issues on this site’s issue tracker.

Morning: REST and Servers (3hrs)

Pre-reqs: Docker installed

What is REST? (45min)
Designing (45min)
1. Understanding your clients and use cases
2. Identifying resources
3. Picking a hypermedia format
  1. HAL
  2. Collection+JSON
  3. JSON API
  4. Siren
  5. others

BREAK (15/30min)

Implementing (45min)
1. The open data sets
2. Introduction to API-in-a-Box
3. Building hypermedia APIs with API-in-a-Box
Validating (45min)
1. Test your hypermedia API
2. Open Discussion/Q&A on REST servers

LUNCH

Afternoon: REST and Client Apps (3hrs)

The Basics of a REST Client (45min)
1. REST is Hypermedia: A short review
2. Understanding H-Factors
3. Dealing with the OAA challenge
4. Self-Description and Adaptability
Designing (45min)
1. The Anatomy of a REST/Hypermedia Client
2. Hypermedia Types and the HTML DOM
  1. HAL
  2. Siren
  3. Collection+JSON
3. A Visual Model