Efficient HTTP Apis

About this Presentation

Learn about HTTP/2 and its relationship to HTTP 1.1 and SPDY through an open source project from Square called okhttp. Understand how HTTP/2 works at a network level and how things like header compression matter. Leave with a solid understanding of what HTTP/2 buys you and how it impacts how to design HTTP Apis.

Developers choose HTTP for its ubiquity. HTTP’s semantics are cherry-picked or embraced in the myriad of apis we develop and consume. Efficiency discussions are commonplace: Does this design imply N+1 requests? Should we denormalize the model? How do consumers discover changes in state? How many connections are needed to effectively use this api?

Meanwhile, HTTP 1.1 is a choice, as opposed to constant. SPDY and HTTP/2 implementations surface, simultaneously retaining semantics and dramatically changing performance implications. We can choose treat these new protocols as more efficient versions HTTP 1.1 or buy into new patterns such as server-side push.

This session walks you through these topics via an open source project from Square called okhttp. You’ll understand how okhttp addresses portability so that you can develop against something as familiar as java’s HTTPUrlConnection. We’ll review how to use new protocol features and constraints to keep in mind along the way. You’ll learn how to sandbox ideas with okhttp’s mock server, so that you can begin experimenting with SPDY and HTTP/2 today!