Asserting Identity

January 3, 2011

Suppose that a front-end server (“A”) is sending an HTTP request to another server (“B”) to process the request and return some response, and that B needs to know on whose behalf A is making that request. This is an “identity assertion” problem. Though this problem is quite common in the HTTP/REST/API-era, the solution is [...]

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Tandem vs Solo Riding

December 17, 2010

The results are in, and the tandem has won.

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Resource Router for Nodejs

December 6, 2010

Last week, I started using the Connect framework for one of the servers's I’m developing. However, I found that the default routing mechanism in Connect is not ideal. In particular, its programming model is method-centric and not resource-centric. See below. Here the app needs to implement callbacks for each HTTP method, and the a path. [...]

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Interfaces for Interoperability

November 8, 2010

Last week, I presented at QCon in San Francisco on a topic related to the interfaces of the web for interoperability in a track organized by Stefan. The session was about how to use the interfaces of the web to promote interoperability. Here are the slides – Do You Do REST?

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First 30 Minutes

October 26, 2010

First 30-minute experience is a quality attribute that any web platform must consider to be able to succeed. Why 30 minutes? Does not matter – pick 2 hours or any amount of time that is less the time a developer can sit down without having to get up (say a max of 3 hours). If [...]

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Code on Demand

October 24, 2010

Thanks to efforts like nodejs, server-side Javascript is getting mainstream. Now code-on-demand on the server side is easy. The idea of code-on-demand is simple. The server extends the functionality of the client by sending back code that the client needs to execute. Here is an example. http.createServer(function(request, response) { // Write the document response.writeHead(200, {“Content-Type” [...]

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Referer Leak

October 18, 2010

A Wall Street Journal blog post is reporting that Facebook is leaking user IDs to third-party developer sites via the Referer header. This was followed by some tweets that using Caja would fix this for app platforms like Facebook, iGoogle, and Yahoo!. It takes some additional steps beyond Caja to ensure that sites don’t leak [...]

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OAuth 2.0 and Cookie Convergence

September 21, 2010

Despite the argument by Eran that OAuth 2.0 without signatures is bad for the web, I find that OAuth 2.0 is what OAuth 1.0 should have been. The most notable difference in OAuth 2.0 is that the token that clients use to access protected resources is exchanged like a Cookie. Consider a typical flow for [...]

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JavaScript and HTTP

September 6, 2010

Let me begin by saying that I have tremendous respect for Douglas Crockford’s contributions to JavaScript. This post is only about two of his comments from his latest installment of the Crockford on JavaScript series. See YUI Theater — Douglas Crockford: “Crockford on JavaScript — Scene 6: Loopage” (52 min.) for the complete video and [...]

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BigPipe Done in Node.js

July 12, 2010

Stephan Schmidt says I’ve implemented a proof of concept of BigPipe in Java (should run as-is in every servlet container): See his blog post for the Java servlet class. Here is the same (or more?) written in Node.js. var http = require(‘http’); var sys = require(‘sys’); var url = require(“url”); http.createServer(function(request, response) { // Write [...]

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New Co-Motion Tandem

May 29, 2010

Co-Motion Periscope Torpedo Tandem – Shimano Ultegra – FSA Gossamer 52-39-30 – 12×28 – S+S couplers – Custom built – Fit by Counter Balance Bicycles (University Village, Seattle) Still learning to maneuver – 103 flat miles in the first week

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Uncomplicated Hypermedia – Facebook’s Graph API

April 21, 2010

It is a pleasure to read the Facebook Graph API. It avoided many of the traps that web services offered by the other major players in the industry suffer from. Facebook’s API is simple, consistent and inter-connected. It is true to the spirit of the web. It is simple, because as a developer, I do [...]

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