Enter RESTXpress!

With RestXpress enterprises can easily expose databases and business applications securely via REST.  Once exposed as REST services, they can easily be integrated into Appery.io apps.

Deployed behind the firewall, RESTXpress comes in two easy-to-install parts. An administrative console (running in a browser) easily sets up enterprise assets as REST services and a run-time gateway presents the enterprise assets as services to the outside world.

Right now, RESTXpress supports databases as assets to be made into REST services. You can use any SQL database with JDBC drivers. This month, we’ll be rolling out SOAP web services as a new type of enterprise asset that can be easily wrapped into a REST service.

And, RESTXpress is free!

You can watch a demo video, download the installer, or join the discussion community…all from one info page.

Appery.io was the product most widely adopted by developers at the Hackathon! More than 30 teams completed and submitted their projects, and many of them won prizes!  This is a TechCrunch record. A distant second was TechCrunch itself — who was promoting its CrunchBase API — with 15 teams.

Over 1,100 developers!

This was TechCrunch’s largest Hackathon to date with over 1,100 developers.  Check out the scene in the picture below.

TechCrunch’s Largest Hackathon!

And the Winners Are…

Congratulations to the Bar Power (1st), Career Hound (2nd), and Waterlog (3rd) teams for winning prizes in our contest!  We were impressed with the innovation and quality of all the projects built in Appery.io — other Appery.io projects won prizes from other  sponsors as well, including prizes from Visa and AT&T!

Team Bar Power and Team Waterlog with Max and Francisco

Team Career Hound

Tons of APIs Used!

Developers loved the large collection of plug-ins in the Appery.io catalog. These plug-ins allow developers to add ready-made connections to popular APIs. APIs used at the Hackathon included Twilio, CrunchBase, Foursquare, AT&T, The New York Times, SendGrid, Weather Underground, SkyDrive, LinkedIn, Pearson, Yammer, Facebook, and ESPN.

Overnight Hacking with 24×7 Support

Tons of developers continued their hacks through the night fueled by the sheer excitement of the event and lots of caffeine! There were so many teams developing on Appery.io that we decided to not sleep that night, so we could provide developers all the help they needed. We had a team of three onsite plus a remote team providing support via Skype. Our support table was the most popular by far, with lines throughout the night.

The Most Popular Table: Ours

We were humbled as 30 teams presented their Appery.io projects on stage to a crowd of over 1,000 influencers. Many thanks to all the developers and designers who participated. We are looking forward to seeing many of your projects turn into real businesses!

You can watch a few of the presentations on our YouTube channel using this playlist.  Also, check out more pictures and buzz from the event on Storify.

When: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM (Timezone: America/Phoenix)

Register now: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/920503433

Our new USA Today API Plug-in allows you to read news from different categories offered by USA Today and get information about the latest music, movie, and book reviews. Also, you can find top salaries for different sports leagues.

Adding USA Today API Plug-in to Your App

To add this plug-in to an app, you will just need to follow these steps in Appery.io:

1. From the Appery.io builder, select Create New and then From Plug-in.
2. Click the check box for USA Today API, and then click the Import selected plugins button.
3. Open Services/USATODAY_ServicesSettings file and set your API keys.

How to Get API Keys

To run the app you need to register a new account on http://developer.usatoday.com, then create new Application and get keys.

Go to Services → USATODAY_ServicesSettings and enter the keys in appropriate fields.

The App

To  use the app, follow these steps:

1. On the start page you will find a list of Top News
   
2. You can find lists of Top 10 Salaries in Sports Leagues:
   
3. Find news in different categories, choose those that interest you most:
   
4. Look through the book, movie and music reviews:
   
5. Using the app you can also search for articles including the keyword.

Under the Hood

Now that we’ve walked through the app, let’s take a peek under the hood.

Services

Services from the plug-in are linked to UI components as part of the design of the app. The following REST services that are defined in the USA Today API plug-in are used in the app.

USATODAY_TopNews

The USATODAY_TopNews service is used for getting the list of top news offered by USA Today.
REST Service Properties displays the URL, main settings, and whether a proxy is used as shown below:

Request Parameters tab is shown below:

{articles_key} parameter value is set in the USATODAY_ServicesSettings.
count parameter is the number of news to get.  

The service can be instantly tested and the response created automatically based on the return response (JSON):

Response Parameters tab:

The other services are set in the same way with their own parameters.

USATODAY_LeaguesList

The USATODAY_LeaguesList service is used for getting the list of available sports leagues. Service Properties:

Request Parameters:

{sports_salaries_key} parameter value is set in the USATODAY_ServicesSettings.

Response Parameters:

USATODAY_TopSalaries

The USATODAY_TopSalaries service is used for getting the list of top salaries from specified league. Service Properties:

Request Parameters:

{sports_salaries_key} parameter value is set in the USATODAY_ServicesSettings.
top parameter is the number of salaries to get.
league parameter is the specified league. To get leagues list you can use USATODAY_LeaguesList service.

Response Parameters:

USATODAY_NewsCategorys

The USATODAY_NewsCategorys service is used to get the list of available news categories. This service created from custom response and use Echo mode. The list of available news categories you can get on http://developer.usatoday.com. This service does not have URI and main settings:

Response Parameters:

USATODAY_NewsFromCategory

The USATODAY_NewsFromCategory service is used to perform news from specified news category offered by USA Today. Service Properties:

Request Parameters:

{articles_key} parameter value is set in the USATODAY_ServicesSettings.
count parameter is a number of news to get.
section parameter is the specified news category.

Response Parameters:

USATODAY_MovieReviews

The USATODAY_MovieReviews service is used or getting the list of last movie reviews offered by USA Today. Service Properties:

Request Parameters:

{movie_reviews_key} parameter value is set in the USATODAY_ServicesSettings.
count parameter is the number of reviews to get.

Response Parameters:

USATODAY_BooksReviews

The USATODAY_BooksReviews service is used for getting the list of last books reviews offered by USA Today. Service Properties:

Request Parameters:

{book_reviews_key} parameter value set in the USATODAY_ServicesSetting.
count parameter is the number of reviews to get.

Response Parameters:

USATODAY_MusicReviews

The USATODAY_MusicReviews service is used for getting the list of last misic reviews offered by USA Today. Service Properties:

Request Parameters:

{music_reviews_key} parameter value set in the USATODAY_ServicesSetting.
count parameter is the number of reviews to get.

Response Parameters:

USATODAY_Search

The USATODAY_Search service is used to perform search by news offered by USA Today. Service Properties:

Request Parameters:

{articles_key} parameter value set in the USATODAY_ServicesSetting.
keyword parameter is a search word or phrase.

Response Parameters:

Mapping the UI to the Services

One of the most important  part in the app design is mapping service to UI components. Here we will show you some examples of mapping for pages.

USATODAY_startScreen

The USATODAY_TopNews service is added to the USATODAY_startScreen page:

The service needs the following mapping:

USATODAY_Leagues_list

The USATODAY_LeaguesList service is added to the USATODAY_Leagues_list page:

The service needs the following mapping:

USATODAY_Top_salaries

The USATODAY_TopSalaries service is added to the USATODAY_Top_salaries page:

The service needs the following mappings:

USATODAY_News

The USATODAY_NewsCategorys service is added to the USATODAY_News page:

The service needs the following mappings:

USATODAY_News_from_category

The USATODAY_NewsFromCategory service is added to the USATODAY_News_from_category page:

The service needs the following mappings:

USATODAY_Book_reviews

The USATODAY_BooksReviews service is added to the USATODAY_Book_reviews page:

The service needs the following mappings:

USATODAY_Movie_reviews

The USATODAY_MovieReviews service is added to the USATODAY_Movie_reviews page:

The service needs the following mappings:

USATODAY_Music_reviews

The USATODAY_MusicReviews service is added to the USATODAY_Music_reviews page:

The service needs the following mappings:

USATODAY_Search

The USATODAY_Search service is added to the USATODAY_Search page:

The service needs the following mappings:

This API allows you to interact with the huge CrunchBase database. (What is CrunchBase? CrunchBase is a free database of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit.) To make it easier to use the API to make mobile apps in Appery.io, we created a plug-in with some ready-made services (interfaces) for using the CrunchBase API.

To add this plug-in to an app, you will just need to follow these steps in Appery.io:

1. From the Appery.io builder, select Create New and then From Plug-in.
2. Click the check box for CrunchBase API and Sample App, and then click the Import selected plugins button.
3. Open Services/CrunchBase_Settings and set your API key. If you don’t have, get one from http://developer.crunchbase.com/

Once you’ve created a new app based on this plug-in, you actually have a simple ready-to-run demo app. Just click the Test button in the right upper corner of the screen to see it work. In this tutorial, we’ll first walk through the sample app included with the plug-in. Then, we’ll show you, “under the hood,” some of how to the API is used in developing the app.

The App

To find details of company in using the app, you follow these steps:

1. On the start page, enter the name of the company which you want to find and click Search button:
   
2. The company details will appear under the Search button
   
3. To make a new search, change the value in the input field and click the Search button again.

Under the Hood

Now that we’ve walked through the app, let’s take a peek under the hood.

Service

Services from the plug-in are linked to UI components as part of the design of the app. The following REST service that is defined in the CrunchBase API plug-in is used in the app.

CrunchBase_getCompany service

The CrunchBase_getCompany service is used for getting the list of company details. REST Service Properties displays the URL, main settings, and whether a proxy is used as shown below:

Request Parameters tab contains the parameter sent to the CrunchBase service:

The {query} value is substituted in mapping when the service is running based on the search value.

The service can be instantly tested and the response created automatically based on the return response (JSON):

Response parameters:

Mapping the UI to the Services

The final part in the app design is mapping service parameters to UI components. Here’s an example of this in action showing response parameters being mapped to output components:

To add this plug-in to an app, you will just need to follow these steps in Appery.io:

1. From the Appery.io builder, select Create New and then From Plug-in.
2. Click the check box for New York Times Best Sellers Search API, and then click the Import selected plugins button.

On th NY Times developers site http://developer.nytimes.com/page you need to register and get API keys for Best Sellers API key. Then you need to fill in the api-key parameter in NYTIMES_BestSellersSettings

The Plug-in contains 4 services for searching Best Sellers.

Let’s review one of them in details.

The NYTIMES_SearchBestSellers is used to search through the list of best sellers. REST Service Properties displays the URL, main settings, and whether a proxy is used as shown below:

Request parameters of service:

Response parameters of service:

The other services are set in the same way with their own parameters.

User Interface

Create page that contains controls to set some search parameters – date, price, title, author, rank, ISBN…

Page example:

On clicking Search button store checked parameters, for example in local storage and navigate to results page (description of the page find bellow).

Results page:

Use the Grid component that contains title, author, publisher and ISBN labels, description text area. You can add other fields returned by the service.

Mapping

Go to Data tab, add service NYTIMES_BestSellers (or NYTIMES_BestSellersHistory, or NYTIMES_SearchBestSellers), name it as bestsellers_search:

Click Edit Mapping button. On the Response tab make the following mapping for parameters from results data:

NY Times server do not support empty date’s parameters in request, so you need to execute the service from JS and check data.Collect all not empty parameters in some variable and pass it to the service execute function.

bestSellersHistory.execute({ data: data });

With the same actions add any of the service: NYTIMES_BestSellers, NYTIMES_BestSellersHistory or NYTIMES_SearchBestSellers.

NYTIMES_BestSellersListsName service doesn’t need additional parameters, except api-key. It returns the list of best sellers.

To add this plug-in to an app, you just need to follow these steps in Appery.io:

1. From the Appery.io builder, select Create New and then From Plug-in.
2. Click the check box for Weather/Wunderground API, and then click the Import selected plugins button.
3. Open Services/Wunderground_Settings and set your API key. If you don’t have one, get it from http://www.wunderground.com/weather/api/

Once you’ve created a new app based on this plug-in, you actually have a simple ready-to-run demo app. Just click the Test button in the right upper corner of the screen to see it work. In this tutorial, we’ll first walk through the sample app included with the plug-in. Then, we’ll show you, “under the hood,” some of how to the API is used in developing the app.

The App

The application is quite simple. It has only one page. When the application loads, it tries to determine your location and show the information about current weather conditions near you. Later, you can enter any city name in the input field and press “Show” button. After that, the application will show current weather conditions in the first city, which name corresponds to the entered query.

Under the Hood

Now that we’ve walked through the app, let’s take a peek under the hood.

Services

Services from the plug-in are linked to UI components as part of the design of the app. The following REST services defined in the Wunderground API plug-in are used in the app.

Wunderground_Autocomplete service

The Wunderground_Autocomplete service returns a list of locations or hurricanes which match against a partial query. For example, searching for San F will return San Francisco, California, San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca, Argentina, and San Felipe de Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, among others.

The request options include the ability to query for cities, hurricanes, or both. The results can be used to form Weather API queries or to link directly to Wunderground resources.

This service does not require an API key.

REST Service Settings displays the URL, main settings, and whether a proxy is used as shown below:

Request tab contains the parameter sent to the Wunderground_Autocomplete service (the only obligatory parameter is “query”):

The service can be instantly tested and the response can be created automatically based on the returned response (in JSON format):

Response parameters:

The l response parameter represents the location and can be used in other Wunderground services to construct URLs for API calls.

Wunderground_Conditions service

The Wunderground_Conditions service returns the current temperature, weather condition, humidity, wind, ‘feels like’ temperature, barometric pressure, and visibility.

Service settings are the following:

The {link} value which defines the location is substituted in mapping when the service is running. When the app is launched, this parameter is given a /q/autoip value, which allows receiving current weather conditions in user’s location.

The service can also be tested, for example with /q/autoip as a link parameter.

Response parameters, which represent full information about current weather conditions, can also be created automatically.

Mapping the UI to the Services

The final part in the app design is mapping service parameters to UI components and local storage variables. Here’s the mapping of request parameters of Wunderground_Autocomplete service. The query input parameter is taken from cityInput input field.

The next image shows the mapping of response parameters of Wunderground_Autocomplete service. The l parameter is saved to local storage variable link.

Wunderground_Conditions service is called after the Wunderground_Autocomplete service execution is successfully completed. The link input parameter is mapped with the local storage variable link.

Wunderground_Conditions service output parameters are mapped to UI components to display weather data.

Importing

1. Login to appery.io and start new Application
2. Select Create new -> From Plug-in, check NY Times Article Search Plugin
   
3. On the NY Times developers site http://developer.nytimes.com/page you need to register and get API keys for Article Search API. Then you need to fill the parameter article_api_key in NYTIMES_Settings
   

The App

To find articles you are interested in using the app, you follow these steps:

1. In the Search enter the keywords
2. Choose the dates when the article was published
3. Click Search Article button
4. You will get the list of articles

Under the Hood

Now that we’ve walked through the app, let’s take a peek under the hood.

NYTIMES_ArticleSearch service

The NYTIMES_ArticleSearch service is linked to UI components as part of the design of the app. It is used to search the article.

For mapping the NYTIMES_ArticleSearch service add it to the StartScreen and make it as shown below:

On the Request tab for begin_date and end_date parameters add the following JS code:

return parseDateToRequest(value);

On the Response tab for date response field add the following JS code:

return parseDateFromResponse(value);

To add this plug-in to an app, you will just need to follow these steps in Appery.io:

1. From the Appery.io builder, select Create New and then From Plug-in.
2. Click the check box for Media/Tribune Company API and Sample App, and then click the Import selected plugins button.
3. Open Media/TC_Settings file and set your API key. If you don’t have, get one from http://developer.tmsapi.com/

Once you’ve created a new app based on this plug-in, you actually have a simple ready-to-run demo app. Just click the Test button in the right upper corner of the screen to see it work. In this tutorial, we’ll first walk through the sample app included with the plug-in. Then, we’ll show you, “under the hood”, some of how to the API is used in developing the app.

The app

To find your fauvorite programs and episodes you need to fill in the search field and click Search button.

1. To search your favorite movies or series from home page:
   1. Enter the name
   2. Click Search button

   After successful searching you will see a list of results:
   

2. To searchmovies or series by parameters:
   1. Enter the parameters as query , program type, content
   2. Click Search params button
   3. Enter Search query
   4. Select Entity type of program
   5. Click Search button

   
   You will be redirected to the result page. Click the result programs list and you will see a movie or episode information. You can view it in the online service.

   There is a list of results. We are select a Dr. House [es] s8e21
   

3. On this screen you can see a list of available online videos and watch it in the online cinema.View episode online button will redirect you to the online cinema.
   

Under the Hood

Now that we’ve walked through the app, let’s take a peek under the hood.

Services

Services from the plug-in are linked to UI components as part of the design of the app. The following REST services that are defined in the Tribune Company API plug-in are used in the app.

TC_Program_Search service

The TC_Program_Search service allows you to search your favorite movies and episodes. REST Service Properties displays the URL, main settings, and whether a proxy is used as shown below:

Request parameters of the service:

The service can be instantly tested and the response created automatically based on the return response (JSON):

Response parameters of the service:

The other services are set in the same way with their own parameters.

TC_Series_Episode_GetOnlineVideo

The TC_Series_Episode_GetOnlineVideo service is used to get a view online episodes from cinemas.

TC_Movie_GetOnlineVideo

The TC_Movie_GetOnlineVideo service is used to get a view online movies from cinemas.

Mapping of service

The final part in the app design is mapping service parameters to UI components. Here’s an example of this in action showing response parameters being mapped to output components: