I recently heard term ‘Writable API’ which is totally new for me. Can anyone explain what does it mean?
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I recently heard term ‘Writable API’ which is totally new for me. Can anyone explain what does it mean?
A publicly writable API is an API that allows anyone to attach meta-data to objects in the owner’s database without changing the original content.
For example, take this object: http://twitter.com/#!/MarsPhoenix/status/1917793215. It is a tweet from the Pheonix Mars Lander.
The tweet is owned by Twitter. But what if I want to tag it and share those tags with the world?
If Twitter opened a writeble API, I could add my own data to this tweet. Say I add the tags “mars” and “nasa” to this object, they would be stored as devon/tag:mars and devon/tag:nasa in their database. If user Bob added a tag of “phoenix”, it would be stored as bob/tag:phoenix in Twitter’s database.
Now we can both share our tags with the world without overwriting any of Twitter’s or each other’s data.
Here is a good blog post explaining the concept:
http://blogs.fluidinfo.com/fluidinfo/2011/02/14/what-is-a-writable-api/