Huddle ~ Work Better Together

API v0.0.1 Released!

We’re currently working on the first version of our API. We had some initial hiccups and that meant we had to delay our original release so that we could build something we were happy with.

edit: We’ve dropped a public preview and you can play with it here

The very first drop of the API will support access to files, folders, and workspaces via a simple REST-ish URI scheme. There’s a little sample app that was put together by our l33t beardscratching web ninja, Nick. FileFerret lets you browse your files and folders through a simple Ajax interface that was built in JQuery.

We know that it’s hard to design an API that will be easy to use for a wide-range of customers. If you have feature priorities, or an idea for a really cool little app, then you should talk to us at Developers@huddle.net. Getting early feedback on what developers want to do with Huddle will help us tune our interfaces for usability.

So er… the techie stuff: We initially played around with an authentication scheme that used custom “username” and “password” HTTP headers, but we’re dropping this in favour of standard HTTP authentication. Sticking with standard authentication means that we can seamlessly pass requests back to the huddle site from the API which makes some operations easier or way cooler. Requests through the API will always be handled over HTTPS so that you can safely send your credentials. I’m brimming over with thoughts on what we can do long term with respect to our authentication schemes.

Data is returned in JSON that overtly resembles JSON-RPC responses.
We’d like to provide Plain Old XML over the same URI scheme, and .Net’s WCF makes that a configuration change, so we can probably get that out pretty soon, too.

All the URI endpoints map to a method which we can re-use for SOAP services later. We know that building JSON/REST or JSON/RPC services rather than SOAP is unusual for .Net shops, but we figure that they’ll be easier to work with for our target audience – web 2.0 developers and designers who want to interoperate with a social networking-cum-project management system.

Proper JSON-RPC services should be on the roadmap at some point, because I think they’re wonderful, even though our CTO hates them.

When we DO come to play around with SOAP, we’ll probably have a different audience in mind: SharePoint and the Enterprise. For full Enterprisey Re-Leveregeration™ we’ll need to pollute our nice clean service with all kinds of crazy bumpf that the average web hacker just doesn’t care about, and we’re not anxious to do that until we need to.

We’re still arguing about how to version these services as we expect them to evolve rapidly in line with our agile development process.
Whatever versioning scheme we eventually decide on may be a breaking change to the public API so please don’t set up a business (just yet) based on our API. As soon as we’re ready for you to rely on the interface to our services we’ll publish a stable release and find some way to make that stable release discoverable and persistent.

There is (of course) a Huddle Workspace set up to discuss the API. For now, you can email us directly and we’ll invite you to join the Workspace. We really ought to make it possible to create a public, read-only Huddle and let you all come and play with us when you like.
Where’s my pen?