ReliefWeb's Journey from RSS Feed to Public API
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ReliefWeb is a digital service by the United Nations that provides curated content for the humanitarian sector. To enhance user experience and facilitate integration, ReliefWeb transitioned from an RSS feed to an API, which supports deep functionality and analytics. Future plans include infrastructure upgrades, SDKs, and improved community monitoring and impact measurement.
ReliefWeb's Journey from RSS Feed to Public API
- 1. ReliefWeb’s Journey from RSS Feed to API 9/26/201 4
- 2. What is ReliefWeb? Why does it have an API? How was it built? What did it take to open it? What’s next?
- 3. Adam Ross Software Architect & API Designer Email: [email protected] Twitter: @grayside_sb
- 4. What is ReliefWeb • ReliefWeb is a specialized digital service for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) established in 1996. • Global staff of 30 content editors aggregating and curating content on a daily basis for the Humanitarian sector. • Over half a million items, growing by tens of thousands per year, especially in the community-sourced areas of jobs and training.
- 5. RSS Was Not Enough • “Here are the last 10 things: build your UI” • Deep integrations are RSS-driven migrations, you need to build an entire application and be responsible for your own scraped copy. • This means lots of overhead for innovation
- 6. So they Made an API and... • Built a mobile version of the site • Built a trends & analytics site to examine what’s going on in the world across decades • Building a new search system on top of the API
- 7. Built on Open Source PHP nginx ElasticSearch Swagger Composer Klein Elastica Jenkins ... etc
- 8. Especially ElasticSearch • Provides a wealth of search & analysis functionality for the API. • Booming community of tools, especially monitoring. • Separately scales from main content storage. • API app focuses on creating a developer experience.
- 9. Opening the API • Public data, public need, public innovation. • Already have a webapp, what more could we need? • (A systematically managed platform.)
- 10. API Provider says... Scale Analytics Policing API Consumer says... Reliability Usability Documentation Invested
- 11. Usability & Reliability • Hypermedia • JSON • CORS (Browser-friendliness) • Backwards Compatibility a.k.a. Forwards Compatibility • Testing (all the ways) • Getting here is a new version and over 80% code change
- 12. More People Sharing ReliefWeb’s Mission • Want people to be able to easily execute on ideas • There’s not time to spend days or weeks learning the system. • Meaningful usage helps fulfill ReliefWeb’s goals and drives technology investment.
- 13. Roadmap Teaser • Infrastructure Upgrade to improve Reliability & Scale • Usage analytics to target improvements and monitor community impact. • SDK & Web Widgets to facilitate integration • Geo & Semantic use cases