Participating in the Web of Data

Christian Heilmann / @codepo8Senior Developer Evangelist

Yahoo Developer Network

http://developer.yahoo.comhttp://icant.co.uk

http://developer-evangelism.com

Las Vegas, Nevada 17. March 2010

Pencils down!

http://delicious.com/codepo8/mix10

Welcome to the web

Professional web developer

Joining the Enterprise crew

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rspeed/4115466351/

This is when things went wrong

Joining the corporate world

Hey ho, Web 2.0 *highfive*

...and it went wrong again.

And now?

The web as the platform

The Mobile WebGeolocation

Market changes leave a track

People like to stick to a path...

Time to shift down a gear...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neurolysis/3335080917/

Finding the common denominator

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentbrew/3764641730/

Tapping into the world of data

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bixentro/2199711056/

Why APIs work

DataSource

Appl

icatio

n Pr

ogra

mm

ing

Inte

rface

End Users

Other Apps

Developers

Why APIs work

DataSource

Appl

icatio

n Pr

ogra

mm

ing

Inte

rface

End Users

Other Apps

Developers

On-demand delivery of the needed

data in the right format.Access of the data source only whenneeded - otherwise caching works.

APIs made easy

APIs made easy

select {what} from {where} where {conditions}

YQL examples

select * from flickr.photos.search where text="donkey" and license=4

YQL examples

select * from craigslist.search where location="sfbay" and type="sss" and query="flower pot"

YQL examples

select * from google.news where q="healthcare"

YQL examplesselect * from query.multi where queries in ('select * from nyt.article.search where query="healthcare"','select * from microsoft.bing.news where query="healthcare"','select * from google.news where q="healthcare"')

YQL examples

select content from html where url="http://www.foxnews.com/" and xpath="//h2/a"

YQL examples

select * from google.translate where q in (select content from html where url="http://www.foxnews.com" and xpath="//h2/a”) and target="fr"

YQL examplesinsert into wordpress.post (title, description, blogurl, username, password) values ("Test Title", "This is a test body", "http://yqltest.wordpress.com", "yqltest", "password")

API for APIshttp://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql? q={query} &format=xml|json &callback={callbackfunction}

APIs made easy

No time wasted reading API docsCreating complex queries with the console.Filter data before use Fast pipes.Caching + converting Server-side JavaScript

http://developer.yahoo.com/yql

Government as a trailblazer?

Conjuring APIs out of thin air

Get the data in a good format.

Then throw it onto “the cloud”

And publish it in a simple format

Then turn it into an API!

select * from csv where url="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tpWDkIZMZleQaREf493v1Jw&output=csv" and columns="Year,City,Sport,Discipline,Country,Event, Gender,Type" and Year="1924"

Spreadsheet to web service

Some more examples

http://icant.co.uk/goohoobi/index.php?research

http://uk-house-prices.com/

http://icant.co.uk/geomaker/index.php

In summary...We have the network and we have the technology.We have people who work effectively with the tools they use. We have a new generation coming who naturally use the internet and are happy with our web interfaces.If we use our efforts 50/50 on new and building APIs and converters to get the data of the old the web will rock.

Homework

http://github.com/yql/yql-tables

Learn more

THANKS!

Photos: flickr.com, oddlyspecific.com, thereifixedit.com, failblog.org, epicwinftw.com,the internets.