July 2009 Archives

The public LikeOrHate API is getting there: we finally released the first full featured beta version (and you can read all about it). We're pretty certain any changes will be minor until the 1.0 release is made, which should happen within the next month.
With the API it will be easy to import data from #LikeOrHate# to any other site or even application. It's a REST API, so it's very simple, but we are also developing libraries for a bunch of languages (PHP, Python, Java and Javascript for starters).

We are testing the REST services and writing the APIs for other languages. This is an interesting exercise, albeit usually boring: writing the exact same code in many different languages. We're starting with PHP, Python, Javascript and Java, which should cover a good deal of the needs of our developer-users. Other languages will come, and we'll gladly accept your own translations.
#PHP# and #Python# are remarkably similar when it comes to small programs. It's almost possible to translate one to the other with nothing but a few regular expressions. The only big difference is how to make HTTP requests. Java will be written by someone else (sometimes I'm lucky, hehe). Then there was JavaScript.
Our #Javascript# code that makes these nices boxes when you hover your mouse on the LikeOrHate links changed a lot during development, and though it's quite clean and easy to work with, it doesn't have what could be separated as a public API for accessing LikeOrHate's REST services. So I set out to write a new one, thinking it you be easy to port from the PHP/Python code. Indeed it was, except for one thing.
You can't make synchronous cross domain request in JS. Ridiculous. You can either make it synchronous using AJAX, but then you hit the cross domain problem, or you can make it asynchronous with <script> tags.
As a result, all JS APIs work by making requests and getting callbacks. And so will ours, to my great dismay.