Facebook Informative Post API

If you haven't already noticed, Informative Post's bread and butter are APIs. An API is an acronym for Application Interface. I know that doesn't tell you much, so and API is basically a standard approach to grab information from and external site and use it for another. For example, Informative Post doesn't make you re-register for their site to start writing your own blog. They use Facebook's API to log users in through Facebook. I can understand that this may sound confusing, but the overall picture is relatively simple.

You don't really need to know much about all of this, but the fact that it cuts down on development. You simply can get things done faster using them. Then again, most of the time they can introduce a lot of overhead. For instance, Informative Post uses Yahoo's API for this text editor. This page now loads roughly two seconds (depending on your system and internet connection) longer than if they just used a normal text area field. However they did not have to "re-invent the wheel" and saved them a considerable amount of development time that they could be using for other parts of their website.

What APIs does the Informative Post use?

At this site, we use Facebook, Google, and Yahoo. We use Facebook for logins. Since this site is mainly centered around Facebook, and reaching out to the Facebook community, it only made since to allow logins to the members of Facebook. However, we do plan on adding login functionality from other sites by using their API. If any of you have suggestions, please comment this post and let me know.

I don't get into Google's API much, but I do use it to enhance the searching capabilities. Using Google's API, if you go to the search page, you can search books, videos, blogs, and all kinds of different stuff. When Google begins indexing the Informative Post site more often, you will be able to search articles on the site very easily.

Last but not least, Yahoo! API. I use this API only for the text editor that you may have noticed if you ever have posted anything on this site. The text editor is still in its Beta version, and I have noticed a few bugs that have caused a bit of an inconvenience, but the functionality trade-off is far better, assume the bugs will get cleaned up in a hastily manner.

Good Technique when using APIs

First of all this site is developed using PHP 5.0. The recent version upgrade from 4.0 to 5.0 in PHP, now allows for the use of OOP or object oriented programming. I will not get into what OOP is if you don't know, but it allows me to use a more structured approach to web development rather than the old and dirty pragmatic approach.

First of all, for every API I use, I develop a class with methods that do anything from grabbing info, to logging into facebook. I am not going to include any code, because that was not the intent of this post, but I want to make a clear point that developing a class for an API gives a great foundation for the API functionality and usability.

And that my friends wraps up the first post in the Informative Post. I hope you enjoyed reading the article and I look forward to reading your comments.

By: Douglas Brown
Published: 08/27/07

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2 Posted Comments:

API

@ 6:46 am 07/07/08 by Osiris

Sorry Douglas, just read this, my brother says it makes complete sense but to me I would probably understand it better if you spoke Greek! then again I am a bit long in the tooth but do enjoy the site.

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wow...

@ 2:29 am 08/25/08 by sgeour

wow, this article got SPAMMED. Without that, its really interesting seeming as i am a website fanatic ii was wondering how you did this!

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