WEB API: What to learn and where

The buzzing key word in the IT industry is “WEB API” and almost all the leading organization have registered there APIs for the world to use. API is an acronym for Application Programing Interface. WEB API is an interface that defines a request-response message system and expressed by either JSON or XML.  By crafting their APIs these companies target the developer as their customer. So for a developer its essential to learn the APIs and their usability for their respective applications.  WEBAPIs are RESTful in nature and as a developer we must know the rules of making our application restful.

We have masters in the world for WEB APIs, but this article targets absolute new comers to the world of WEB APIS. This is like an index for your WEB API learning and I have tried my best to compile as many resource as possible to strengthen your learning. As you read the article and move along the page your interest might increase to add something else that I have missed, make sure to put a comment if you want to suggest something.

Knowing REST

Defining WEB APIs

Books

Training Videos

Articles

WEB API Design

API Documentation

List of APIs

HTTP Status Code / Server Header Response

Authorization

Performance

Deployment

Further Reading

Point to consider (But make your own choice)

  • At max try to use two base URLs per resource  (GET/Lists, GET/Item)
  • Collection goes better with HTTP verbs.

Finally if you are in Indian and want to develop some apps for Indian Railways , there is a API for this as well Smile surprise!!! , check here : http://railpnrapi.com/

Well Keep smiling, till next.

Version1.0/Sept-2014

a New address for the blog

I have been using the https://manasdash.wordpress.com/ for quite a long time and services from word press are awesome.

Now this blog will be housed under http://thoughts2share.in/ and still will look like the same old blog without any big differences as I will be using the same wordpress themes to make life easier.

This will be in beta phase and will grow gradually into a full fledged website to share thoughts and expecting permanent and guest bloggers to write and share their thoughts using this domain.

Lots of expectations and excitements are on the way in this journey.

Thanks for your co-operation.

http://manasdash.thoughts2share.in/

Keep smiling and make it contagious. Happy New Year 2014

 

May this new year brings lots of inspiration inside you to make you self efficient in the area you are growing.

 

Keep smiling and make it contagious.

 

Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering ‘it will be happier’…
― Alfred Tennyson

 

A new year report https://manasdash.wordpress.com/2013/annual-report/

#3 MS-Office Gyan for the day: OCR in OneNote

 

onenote

Optical Character Recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic conversion of scanned or photoed images of typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded/computer-readable text.

 

I tried exploring the OCR and other features of Microsoft One Note and its really cool. I might present in a layman style but believe me its awesome tool for your day to day notes. Just take a look how I explored One Note.

 

If you are using One Note get the One Note  apps for free from http://www.onenote.com/

 

Just open your OneNote and create your Tab and your page… yes all set. This is a simple note taking application but the capabilities what One Note has is mind-blowing.

Select the Insert menu and take a look at the Ribbon. Lets try couple of feature. We will start with the OCR.

We will read text from an image!!! Cool …Right. Lets do it.

 

Copy Text From Picture

image

Here I have inserted one of my picture where some quotes are there. I will try extracting the text from the picture. Its just two step.

 

 

image

Right click on the picture & select  “copy Text From Picture”  and when you are ready “paste your text any where”.

image

 

Now you try with various picture and explore the power of One Note.

Screen Clipping

How about taking screen shot in a  quick and effective way with time stamp. Now I am not talking about that old “Print Screen” method of taking screen print and paste it and then write timestamp by your own. Lets see how One Note helps.

 

imageSelect the Insert menu and select “Screen Clipping” and then suddenly you see One Note will disappear and will go to the background. Its giving a chance to you to capture a portion of the screen you are interested for. (next time Try the keys (Shift+ Windows + s) for a twist.)

image

 

Now once you select one area OneNote will take that portion and will paste in the text area of OneNote with a time stamp which reads like “Screen clipping taken <Date>”. I took a screen capture from my blog.

 

 

 

 

Now a task for you , If you have a scanner attached try the other option “Scanned Images”

 

Where next

http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/onenote/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.onenote&hl=en

https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/microsoft-onenote-for-iphone/id410395246?mt=8

 

Till next “Keep Smiling”.

Computer Science Education Week: Dec 9th to 15th 2013

logo_text

Anybody can learn

If you have never learned computer , now this is your chance to learn and support for the “Computer Science Education Week”. If you are willing to learn the course materials are free. Just learn and spread the word.

 

Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) is an annual program dedicated to inspiring K-12 students to take interest in computer science.

Originally conceived by the Computing in the Core coalition, Code.org is producing CSEdWeek for the first time this year, held in recognition of the birthday of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906).  (Source http://csedweek.org/about)

 

Code.org says

If you haven’t already, start your own Hour of Code. Help us reach 1 billion lines of code!

 

Some stats so far

395,695,793 LINES OF CODE WRITTEN BY STUDENTS

12,241,183 have learned an HOUR of CODE

 

Different organization and BIG Boss of the industry are supporting for this cause.

Word from the Leaders and trendsetters

 

Aaron Skonnard from pluralsight said

We’ll award a full Pluralsight grant to the first 50 schools that participate in ‪#‎HourOfCode‬ and apply by Dec 15: http://blog.pluralsight.com/hour-of-code-grants ~ Aaron Skonnard

 

Even Khan Academy is supporting for this cause.

 

About Code.org

Code.org is a non-profit dedicated to expanding computer science education. The Code.org vision is that computer science should be part of the core curriculum in every school, alongside other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, such as biology, physics, chemistry and algebra.

 

I am learning courses from CodeAcademy and I am really happy with the content and the presentation.

http://www.codecademy.com/users/scriptRunner69432/achievements

 

Don’t wait , learn and be a part of the HISTORY.

New Mail Window–Just a line of code

In most of the website you might have noticed, the contact us or contact me link at the end. Once you click that it will open a new mail window of your default mail client and it will have the mention subject and a mail id in the to box. So we can achieve that with the below line of code.

   1: <a href="mailto:simplymanas@gmail.com?Subject=query">Contact Me</a>

 

in HTML5 I wrote this in the footer section in this way.

 

   1: <footer>&copy; simplymanas 2013

   2: <a href="mailto:simplymanas@gmail.com?Subject=From BR">Contact Me</a>

   3: <a href="http:\\www.twitter.com\simplymanas">@simplymanas</a>

   4: </footer>

 

and it will appear like this

© simplymanas 2013

Contact Me @simplymanas

 

This article was also published by me in

Beyond Relational

Quote of the Day:

No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.

–John Calvin Coolidge