Droidcon India 2013

This talk looks designing web service APIs that embrace the restrictions and limitations of mobile networks: how mobile networks differ from fixed networks, how to take advantage of these differences, and how to make your API useful to developers of mobile apps.

Outline

One of the biggest benefits of the mobile app revolution is the ability to present information from the internet in new and exciting ways. Behind every app that relies on online data is an online service which, if implemented well, will make it super-easy to let your app access everything it needs. Unfortunately, not every web service does this well.

In this presentation, we’ll be looking into design principles for web APIs with a focus on making things not suck for mobile app developers. A particular focus will be on making services that are robust in the face of unreliable network access.

Requirements

(This talk is designed for a 40–50-minute session)

Speaker bio

Christopher is a Python programmer from Hobart, Tasmania. He’s a Computer Science Honours graduate of the University of Tasmania, and he now works as an Android developer at Asdeq Labs. Working with Android means that his day job involves more Java than he’d like. He has a strong interest in the development of the Australian Python Community — he is an immediate past convenor of PyCon Australia 2012 and 2013 in Hobart, and is a newly-minted member of the Python Software Foundation.

In his spare time, Christopher enjoys presenting on Mobile development at Open Source conferences, and presenting on Open Source development at Mobile conferences.