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Do we need a web API?

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Re: Do we need a web API?

#21

Post by collyw »

icebraining wrote: post #9
al2o3cr wrote: post #5

CORBA called, they want their ideas back

Even in JS, the Meteor framework was basically created to implement this. Except they actually implement things like validation, because as much as one may want to unify both environments, the reality is that exposing all your methods to the outside world may have some pitfalls, to put it mildly.

What ever happened to Meteor? It was flavour of the month a few years ago, with many a frontend dev ranting about how great it was. Now seems to be forgotten about.

Re: Do we need a web API?

#22

Post by TOGoS »

fyp wrote: post #15

Pouchdb/firebase/backend-as-a-services were supposed to be the answer to getting rid of CRUD apis. The problem is authorization and validation becomes really difficult if you don't have a backend that you can trust.

10 years of writing web application backends has taught me that yes, authorization is indeed the reason we all still have jobs. And the occasional handling of a transaction failure.

Re: Do we need a web API?

#23

Post by collyw »

theon144 wrote: post #12

In my view you just replaced an explicit API built on top of known protocols, by a semi-magical implicit API. The problem of serialization, deserialization, versioning, endpoint design... They aren't an artifact, they're intrinsic to how Web apps are built. But yeah, for small projects I think this could be really neat.

Having a properly defined API gives you a nice interface to test.

Re: Do we need a web API?

#24

Post by daxfohl »

icebraining wrote: post #9
al2o3cr wrote: post #5

CORBA called, they want their ideas back

Even in JS, the Meteor framework was basically created to implement this. Except they actually implement things like validation, because as much as one may want to unify both environments, the reality is that exposing all your methods to the outside world may have some pitfalls, to put it mildly.

And Opa language and framework. (To note, the language itself was awesome, too bad it was tightlyccoupled to the framework since that approach never seems to work)

Re: Do we need a web API?

#26

Post by zemnmez »

this is just JSON RPC? The "constantly serialize and deserialize it" statement is totally untrue too... The frontend makes 6 XHR calls just to render a single page and they're all just JSON. The idea of the frontend 'just calling' the backend with no API boundary is nothing short of atrocious for security.

The only feasible logical end to this is ASP, which was an interesting idea when it was launched 19 years ago

Re: Do we need a web API?

#27

Post by pkage »

collyw wrote: post #21
icebraining wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in JS, the Meteor framework was basically created to implement this. Except they actually implement things like validation, because as much as one may want to unify both environments, the reality is that exposing all your methods to the outside world may have some pitfalls, to put it mildly.

What ever happened to Meteor? It was flavour of the month a few years ago, with many a frontend dev ranting about how great it was. Now seems to be forgotten about.

Hassles with installing NPM packages (they used their own package manager (!)), it was incredibly heavyweight, baked in reliance on MongoDB, and a weird templating language caused a kind of death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation.

Plus, React came out and blew Meteor out of the water.

Re: Do we need a web API?

#28

Post by daxfohl »

collyw wrote: post #21
icebraining wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in JS, the Meteor framework was basically created to implement this. Except they actually implement things like validation, because as much as one may want to unify both environments, the reality is that exposing all your methods to the outside world may have some pitfalls, to put it mildly.

What ever happened to Meteor? It was flavour of the month a few years ago, with many a frontend dev ranting about how great it was. Now seems to be forgotten about.

We tried to use it in real life for smilebooth. It was nice for little sample apps but as soon as you hit something it was not designed for, the workaround was more painful than if you had just gone with a plain rest api. Scalability was pretty limiting too.

Re: Do we need a web API?

#30

Post by solipsism »

dekalbcountyman wrote: post #18

isn't this a weak ass version of RPC/gRPC? https://grpc.io/ - and thank God gRPC never took off the way Google hoped, it was pure ego and politics like the majority of OSS projects these days (in the web world)

Can you elaborate on the "ego and politics" part?
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