Building 10 Apps in 10 Days using only Javascript and APIfy as backend

Submitted by Sathish (@sathish316) on Tuesday, 21 August 2012

Section: JavaScript Everywhere Technical level: Beginner Session type: Demo

Abstract

How to quickly build responsive mobile apps using HTML5,Javascript,Twitter bootstrap and mobile backends like Parse, APIfy. APIfy is a backend service which converts structured data in HTML and wikipedia pages to JSON using selectors.

Outline

APIfy is a backend service that converts structured data in HTML and Wikipedia pages to JSON. It caches data and expires it periodically. It can be used to parse data in websites to JSON for building web/mobile apps quickly without any database/backend web service. This talk will be a showcase of 10 responsive mobile apps built over a span of 10 days using only Javascript and APIfy. Apps range from IMDB movie tracker, Olympics medals visualizer, Public transit etc. Apps are built using HTML5, Javascript, Twitter bootstrap and deployed in heroku as sinatra or flask apps.

Speaker bio

I'm a developer at ThoughtWorks who writes code in Java, Ruby, Clojure, Javascript. I built APIfy to convert structured data in any website to JSON. I've used APIfy to build a lot of apps using only HTML5 and Javascript to showcase it's capability. It was also used by one of the Top 10 Apps in Mac Appstore during Olympics.

Slides

http://apify.heroku.com/apps

Comments

Sathish (@sathish316) Proposer 7 years ago

APIfy is built using scrapify and jsonify libraries which can be used to host html to json converters. Libraries are open sourced here https://github.com/sathish316/scrapify. But the hosted platform is not open source

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- Kiran Jonnalagadda (@jace) Reviewer 7 years ago
  
  BTW, Scrapify’s repo doesn’t specify a license. Could you add that? We require a permissive open source license for JSFoo.
  
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  Sathish (@sathish316) Proposer 7 years ago
  
  Thanks. I just added MIT License https://github.com/sathish316/scrapify/blob/master/README.md#license. The talk will mostly focus on quick prototyping and how anybody can host their own HTML to JSON API as Rack app (https://github.com/sathish316/scrapify/blob/master/README.md#json-api-rack-application-example)
  
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- Kiran Jonnalagadda (@jace) Reviewer 7 years ago
  
  In which case, your talk will have to be limited to the open sourced parts. I suppose you can describe the libraries and use APIfy as an example of what can be built with it.
  
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Kiran Jonnalagadda (@jace) Reviewer 7 years ago

APIfy looks like a great idea. Congratulations. However, is it open source? That is a requirement for presenting at JSFoo.

We want to encourage an environment where (a) developers present original work — which yours is — and (b) participants feel encouraged to pick up your ideas and build on them, with the security that the base layer won’t go away.

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JSFoo 2012