REST & Filesystems: A homage to plan9

In my previous post I mentioned, among other things, two things I want to hack together: An improved REST API for libferris, and KDE KIO integration for libferris. It occurred to me that these two, while able to be performed as distinct tasks, are better done as one. Or rather that the later can be coded to rely on the first being available. With a REST API and a Web server, a virtual filesystem inherits one of the great properties plan9 - filesystems as separate processes that can run on another machine and access data on a third machine.

Consider wanting to get at information from a PostgreSQL table from a mobile phone. The REST API might be on the "webserver" machine, while the database runs on dbserver. The phone talks to webserver sending GET/POST and receiving XML/JSON depending on it's preference. Using libferris, webserver talks to dbserver (by mounting it) and queries and returns results back to the phone.

This also lets the phone upload images via the REST API. Instead of setting up software on the phone, just use QML or HTML5 and http POST the image to the REST API using a path of "flickr://me/upload/" and have the server send that image onwards. Anything that libferris can mount and interact with becomes available over the light weight REST API, ready for QML/Javascript thumb interfaces. Other examples would be getting at a mounted Zoneminder over REST, or a webcam using mounted gstreamer.

Using REST like this also fairly nicely sweeps away language binding issues. Almost all languages can access http in some way. Sort of like CORBA without the IDL files and tools to create stubs for you. Hmm, a REST API IDL compiler for Qt with OAuth support... mmm...