openstack team mailing list archive

[Soren Hansen <soren@xxxxxxxxxx>]

2011/2/16 Eric Day <eday@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 11:20:31PM +0100, Soren Hansen wrote:
>> 2011/2/16 Sandy Walsh <sandy.walsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> >> Hmmm... I am not sure about exposing internal structure to customers in this
>> >> way.  Would you really want the more 'internal' zones exposed?
>> > To Jay's point, the "control panel" would hide all that switching.
>>
>> I agree with this. It's an API, not a UI. Doing redirects or other
>> standard HTTP-y sorts of things seems perfectly reasonable to me.
> One last thing, your comment about 'It's an API, not a UI': API's are
> becoming (or already are) more important than traditional UIs these
> days. Their ease of use does matter, so we should certainly consider
> the UX for APIs. I want a simple, fast APIs to use with my Android
> apps. :)

I understand and agree. I'm just saying that something as commonly
used and wellknown as an HTTP redirect is perfectly reasonable. Most
HTTP libraries have built in magic to handle it, so in most cases you
wouldn't even notice.

On a side note, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for the API
endpoint to spit out a bit of html if there's an appropriate Accept:
header. E.g. going to /servers/{id}/ could show some info for the
server as well as links to actions that could be taken (reboot,
snapshot, etc.). We'd essentiall build a UI into the API. Frankly, I
find it silly that so few API's do stuff like this in spite of being
built on top of HTTP.

-- 
Soren Hansen
Ubuntu Developer    http://www.ubuntu.com/
OpenStack Developer http://www.openstack.org/