For this week’s blog post, I have found an article discussing software framework. Varvana Myllarniemi, Sari Kujala, Mikko Raatikainen, and Piia Sevonn, the authors of the article, say on software framework, “Software frameworks are nowadays extensively used to develop different kinds of software applications efficiently. For example, using a framework, such as Spring, Django, Node.js or Angular.js, is the de facto standard approach for developing web software.” (Varvan Myllarniemi, et. All). When selecting a framework, you will need to keep in mind that it will be a critical design decision. This is because the framework will control the application’s architecture.

There is a drawback that does come when selecting to use a framework. Due to frameworks being very complex and involve specific designs, they are very hard to learn. The current research on frameworks focus on is technical abilities more than anything else. So, there is very little research on how frameworks are picked for use in development. However, when thinking about APIs provided by the framework, there is a plethora of research from different viewpoints. The reliability and usability of the API have been the most studied. This has been more studied to it being able to reduce programmer frustration and potential bugs.

For most companies, customer need cannot be solved by development. Hence, by opening software ecosystems they can give up part of their control for faster speed and wider coverage. A definition on software ecosystems from the article can be seen below,

A software ecosystem is defined as “a set of businesses functioning as a unit and interacting with a shared market for software and services, together with the relationships among them, where relationships are frequently underpinned by a common technological platform or market” (Jansen et al. 2009).

A software ecosystem revolves around a central technology that is often now referred to as a software platform (such as an operating system, end-user application, etc.). These kinds of platforms can be accessed by end-users but also by software developers.

A platform owner will also need to provide a platform boundary resource, so a developer can build off the software platform. The authors of the article say on platform boundary resources, “The platform boundary resources are a way for the platform owner to control and influence what happens in the software ecosystem, while benefiting from the generativity of external application development.” (Varvan Myllarniemi, et. All). This is also good from companies that are also looking for a way to collaborate on similar application builds.

https://jserd.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40411-018-0050-8

From the blog CS@worcester – Michale Friedrich by mikefriedrich1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Being computer science students, many of us including myself have never really written to much code before starting classes here. And since many of us were beginners at writing code and the practices that come with that, our code tended to be an affront to the eyes of anyone who was unfortunate enough to have to read it. As it turns out, many of the issues with our code actually have names, and are usually referred to under the umbrella term of Anti-Patterns. I found out about Anti-Patterns back when we were covering design smells in class, and while thinking of what I wanted to write for a blog entry this week I decided to go more in depth on some of the different types of anti-patterns out there. Many of which I have definitely been guilty of in the past. GeeksforGeeks has a great article covering what anti-patterns are and different types of them. There were plenty in that article, too many to go into in this post without making it too long, so I will go over the ones that I have done most frequently in the past (Although I almost certainly have done each one of the ones in that article at some point). First and foremost is spaghetti code, which is basically just a term that refers to messy code. Code that works, but is incredibly disorganized, difficult to read, and overall unmaintainable. I can confidently say that many of my first personal projects and class assignments suffered from this. My code would work, but god forbid you want to quickly add or remove a feature without needing to try to interpret what that code originally needed to do. Thankfully with time I have gotten better at organizing my code and making it much more readable and maintainable. Another Anti-Pattern that I have done plenty of times, and actually relates to a previous blog post I made, is the “Boat Anchor”. This is essentially useless code within your program. This can also be referred to as “Dead Code” Code that you wrote thinking it would be useful, but it ended up just taking space. This is actually the issue that YAGNI tries to address. There are still functions in many of my projects that I thought would have a purpose, but now they just take up space. I tend to do this less now, although I cant say I dont slip up every now and then.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/6-types-of-anti-patterns-to-avoid-in-software-development/

From the blog CS@Worcester – Sebastian's CS Blog by sserafin1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Surprise, you probably wont. Lets back up a step first though and talk about what that acronym actually means. YAGNI stands for “You Aren’t Gonna Need It” and is an important acronym to consider for software development applications. I heard about YAGNI from our class, and I wanted to know more about what exactly it consists of, and what its purpose is. Thats where I found a good article by scaleyourapp.com, which did a good job explaining it. In its essence, YAGNI means that you shouldn’t create something until its actually necessary for your application. After all why would you want to waste time on things that might not ever be needed. As many people who have written code know, we often write a function/class expecting to need it in the future, only to never actually use it. This in turn leads to wasted space in the program, wasted time writing the unneeded code, and now you have to think about whether you should bother keeping it or just dump it to save space. I have plenty of personal experience with this in my own projects and work. One particular example that comes to mind is that during a 36 hour hackathon last spring, my teammate and I spent many hours trying to figure out a good way to incorporate a login/user tracking system into the app we were writing. While this feature would EVENTUALLY be needed, for the sake of creating a basic proof of concept app it was far from crucial. Because we didn’t use YAGNI principles we wasted time that could have been spent doing any of the other myriad of tasks we had to do for the rest of the app. These several wasted hours resulted in us not being able to add other needed features, and as such the app was not as complete as it could have been given the time constraints. Even before hearing about YAGNI as an idea, that experience left my partner and I with a realization that there are much more efficient ways to approach writing code than what we attempted. Since then I have been much better about not writing useless code until its needed; however I still have instances where I create a function or class that realistically doesnt need to exist. It can be difficult sometimes to figure out what is needed and what isnt, especially at the beginning of a project. I always assume I am going to need one feature or another, so I begin write it; only to find out a little while later that its not really that important at the moment. While I still started writing it, I have gotten better at stopping before I go too far and waste too much time. That way I can spend more time and energy focusing on more important aspects of the program I am writing.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Sebastian's CS Blog by sserafin1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Front-end is the graphical user interface where users can interact with on their computers to communicate with the website’s database to view the information they need. To develop the front-end, developers use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript framework; and they also have to be aware of the constantly changing in the tools and techniques to create the front-end of a website.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the most basic markup language (absolutely not a programming language), for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. Learning HTML is the first step in front-end development. Come after HTML is CSS, stands for Cascading Style Sheet, and is used for formatting markup language, mostly for HTML. Finally, while HTML and CSS creates the structure of the website, JavaScript is what powers its interactivity. Furthermore, learning JavaScript is a never ending process since there are new frameworks coming every year. Let’s take a look at the popularity differences between these web frameworks, according to the Stack Overflow survey in 2019 and 2020 respectively:

We can see that jQuery is losing their numbers to React.js and Angular and React.js looks like they will get that first place this year, but the top three most popular frameworks are all JavaScript. Besides, as I said that there are new frameworks coming every year, it means that when a better framework shows up, front-end developers have to learn it in order not to be left behind. For now, in my opinion, React.js is what you should go for if you want to get a role in this field.

Besides the programming language skills, there are other tasks that front-end developers have to be aware of. From my experience, a method called fake API is really important. For instance, in the process of developing the graphical user interface, front-end developers have to test their work by calling the API from the back-end team to see how the data fit into their blocks. However, in case that back-end team falls behind or somehow is not able to provide the front-end team with the built API, fake API is one useful method to test the front-end. Another frustrating task that I’ve heard about is that the design has to be responsive which means that the website has to run properly on any device, from the smallest mobile device to the largest desktop.

In conclusion, above is what I know so far about the front-end. Also, I found outstanding guidance about the practice of front-end development from Frontend Masters including almost everything we’ll need regarding a front-end topic. Check it out if you want to learn something in the front-end.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Vien's Blog by Vien Hua and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week I decided to dive more into APIs in general, not just RESTFUL APIs. So let us start at the beginning. API stands for Application Programming Interface, and it is an interface with a set(s) of functions. These functions allow programmers to use specific features or data of an application. A web API is an API that is accessed over the web, like through the HTTP protocol. The web API is a framework that assists in creating and developing HTTP based services.

An API usually works as follows, the client application initiates an API call, usually to retrieve information. This call is also known as a request. This request is then processed from the application to a web server using the API’s Uniform Resource Identifier, and usually has a request verb, like GET or POST, for example, headers, and a request body. After receiving a valid request from the application, the API makes a call to the web server. The server then responds to the API with the requested information, and the API then transfers the data to the initial requesting application.

APIs are often used for many reasons. This includes, but is not limited to, improving collaboration, offering easier innovation, data monetization (as money makes the world go round), and added security. APIs enable integration such that platforms and other applications can easily communicate with each other, allowing easier automation, therefore improving collaboration. They also offer flexibility, allowing connections to new businesses and reaching new markets, offering easier innovation. APIs are also often offered for free, usually initially, to allow the developers audience to grow so they can build relationships with their audience of developers around their brand for the future, securing future business partners, thus offering data monetization. Lastly, APIs create an added layer of security between your data and a server. Developers can also choose to add further security measures like tokens, signatures, and Transport Layer Security encryption, just to name a few.

There are also many types of APIs, some of which include, but are not limited to, SOAP, or Simple Object Access Protocol, XML-RPC, which is a protocol that relies on XML to transfer data, JSON-RPC, which uses JSON instead of XML for its work, and REST, which we have covered in prior weeks blog posts.

Source:

IBM

I decided to use the above source for this weeks blog post because they provided a ton of good information about APIs in general, and IBM is also a very well known company and therefore also a good reputable information source.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Erockwood Blog by erockwood and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I have worked before with Docker and Docker Compose, but I am a bit shaky when it comes to networking either of them. I know it is possible, and I know it is often a necessary step in deploying applications. However, I have never had luck trying to network containers together. I wanted to spend some time learning more about this.

Docker comes with several networking drivers: bridge, host, overlay, ipvlan, and macvlan. Bridge is the default networking driver used by Docker and is the most popular. Ranvir Singh’s article “Docker Compose Bridge Networking” outlines how to use that bridge networking driver to network containers together using either Docker or Docker Compose.

A network for Docker containers can be created using the following command:

$ docker network create -d bridge my-network

This creates a network called ‘my-network’ which uses the bridge driver. To add containers to this network, one would run commands similar to the following:

$ docker run -dit --name container1 --network my-network ubuntu:latest
$ docker run -dit --name container2 --network my-network ubuntu:latest

These commands would create ubuntu containers ‘container1’ and ‘container2’ respectively and would add them to the ‘my-network’ network. Singh advises that a network should be dedicated to a single application; this ensures that applications are secure and isolated from one another.

Networking with the bridge driver works slightly differently when using Docker Compose. By default, Docker Compose will create a network with the bridge driver and will deploy the services defined in the Compose file to that network. This network is named after the directory that the docker-compose.yml file is in. This setup does not require ports to be exposed in order for containers to talk to one another; one should be able to call the hostname to reach another container. Calling ‘docker-compose down’ removes and deletes the network created from the docker-compose.yml file.

Instead of using the default Docker Compose network, a network can be defined inside the docker-compose.yml file. This definition happens at the top level of the compose file, similar to how a service is defined. This way multiple networks can be defined and used by a single compose file.

I selected this source because it was something I was interested in. I thought networking was exclusive to Docker Compose, and I was not aware that you could create a network for Docker images to communicate over. This does not help my problem of not being able to get Docker Compose services to talk to each other, but it does help to clarify some information I had been missing. I will internalize the information in this article for future work, but I also want to keep looking into this topic.

Additional Source

From the blog CS@Worcester – Ciampa's Computer Science Blog by robiciampa and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Christian Shadis

Over the past month, my Software Construction, Architecture, and Design course has shifted gears into a sort of crash-course for full-stack web development. Our initial focus was on the backend of web apps and specifically on APIs. In class I learned how to edit API endpoints for different HTTP methods such as GET, POST, and PUT. I understood how to code the API and I understood the difference between the different HTTP methods, but I still did not understand the very basics of what an API was beyond its acronym. For this blog post, I set out to learn the fundamental nature of APIs to supplement my technical understanding. While it is helpful to know how to code an API, the knowledge would likely be useless without an understanding of what an API is or when to use one.

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a technology developed as a solution for multiple applications needing to communicate despite their incompatibility. For example, a person running Google Chrome trying to view the available items on a store website requires their web browser and the store’s server to be able to communicate. This is unlikely to be possible without an API. The API allows Chrome to send a request for information to the server, and then allows the server to return the requested data (or an error message) in a particular format such as JSON. The API facilitated the exchange of information between a client application and an unrelated server. This example illustrates the necessity of APIs. Without them, communication among devices built differently would be impossible. Web browsing as we know it would not exist, nor would web-based phone applications.

In What is An API and How Does It Work?, Thomas Davis first describes the omnipresence of APIs in everyday life even for non-programmers, and contrasts that ubiquity with the fact that few people understand how an API works, let alone what it does. He describes the API as an intermediary between two parties that do not speak each other’s language, and provides everyday examples of situations in which one would desire two computers to communicate. Once he explained the base concept of an API, he described different types of APIs such as the REST API, the SOAP API, and the XML-RPC API, comparing and contrasting each.

Knowing how to code APIs is an important aspect of backend development, but I feel much more confident in my ability to code an API now that I more fully understand the concept. I expect to build backends for web applications in the future, so this knowledge should be helpful in my development career.

References:

https://towardsdatascience.com/what-is-an-api-and-how-does-it-work-1dccd7a8219e

From the blog CS@Worcester – Christian Shadis' Blog by ctshadis and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

In the blog linked above by John Au-Yeung and Ryan Donovan, they look at “how to design REST APIs to be easy to understand for anyone consuming them, future-proof, and secure and fast since they serve data to clients that may be confidential.” The blog post starts off with an intro detailing how REST APIs are one of the most common kinds of web services today, describes a REST API’s function and addresses the problem of designing it right so the API consumer and API maintainer don’t run into any problems down the road.

The blog post is sectioned off into 7 different sections. These sections all address a good practice for designing a REST API as well as a block of code to set an example of what they mean. The 7 sections consist of Accept and respond with JSON, Use nouns instead of verbs in endpoint paths, Handle errors gracefully and return standard error codes, Allow filtering, sorting, and pagination, Maintain Good Security Practices, Cache data to improve performance, and Versioning our APIs.

To summarize the 7 sections,
Accept and respond with JSON: REST API should accept JSON for request payload and also send responses to JSON.

Use nouns instead of verbs in endpoint paths: Since verbs are already in the HTTP request, we should use nouns.

Handle errors gracefully and return standard error codes: Eliminates confusion for API users by handling errors neatly via HTTP response codes that indicate what error has occurred, this allows API maintainer to have enough info to understand problem that’s occurred.

Allow filtering, sorting, and pagination: Allowing these 3 features will increase performance by reducing usage of server resources.

Maintain Good Security Practices: Use SSL/Load a SSL certificate onto server and add role checks for users.

Cache data to improve performance: Add caching to return data from the local memory cache instead of querying the database, this would lead to getting data faster but data could be outdated.

Versioning our APIs: Version your API semantically like most apps do today.

From reading this blog post, I’ve learned more about the good practices for REST APIs. I was interested in learning more about REST APIs since it was the first time I was working them when we went over in class activity 12. Also, the blog post’s title mentioned REST API design which I thought was relevant to our class due to the class being aptly named Software Design and Architecture.

Admittedly, I didn’t learn the most helpful stuff from this article since I had learned most of it in class and by going over the in class activity with my group but I thought this blog post helps reinforce good practices if I do eventually work on REST APIs in my CS career. I’d also say that I looked into the article because of the making of endpoints for homework 4.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Brendan Lai by Brendan Lai and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.