Open Standards for APIs

I work or have worked with APIs of all sorts of standards, sometimes many standards at once – or none. Each standard exists for a purpose and might be a great fit, or a terrible fit for other purposes. Today’s post is a recap of some of the common API standards around and what you need to know about each one. Continue reading

PSR-What?

There’s been some cool things happening in the PHP world over the last few years, but with the least helpful names ever … yes, those PSR-somethings which all do totally different things (apart from two of them which are the same). They’re actually all superb things, and done for a good reason, so I thought I’d try to translate them into normal speak.

PSR

Let’s begin at the beginning. Once upon a time, at a conference, the lead developers from a selection of frameworks sat down in the same room (they are better at it nowadays, at the time I might not have believed it had I not been there) and agreed some standards for all their projects to use. The aim is to make PHP frameworks and libraries easier to combine for users, and so it was that php-fig: the PHP Framework Interop Group was born. This group of awesome individuals oversee the PHP Standards Recommendations (PSRs). Continue reading