The Art of Rails®

Chapter 5. Beautiful Web APIs

W. Web stepped off the bus and forced a nervous swallow as he entered the crowd of noise and signs. He had arrived as close to the heart of Application Square as the bus could get, which was about two blocks away. As far as he could see, URIs and other regulars of their crowd were holding signs and milling about.

It was not unlike a football game, Web thought, remembering videos of tailgating parties that had been uploaded to him before. He waded through the URIs trying to get closer to the square.

The URIs were tall, French fry–like creatures with short, stubby legs and tyrannosaurus-like arms. For some reason, they all talked as though they were from the Bronx, even the Unicode ones. As groups of them chanted their slogans, their nasal voices occasionally cracked at the exciting parts.

No wonder these guys get pushed around, Web thought.

The real geeks were the ones who hadn't even bothered to register domain names for themselves. IP addresses blazoned on their chests. They were a bit pastier than the others and wore thick glasses.

"Hey, watch it! Geez, buddy, can't we even get some respect at our own protest?"

Web had been searching for the stage so intensely that he had inadvertently walked straight into one of them.

"Oh! I'm sorry...uh, 208.97.177.118," Web said, tilting his head sideways to read the IP address written on its chest. "I was just looking for the main stage. Do know if there is one?"

"What am I, DNS? That resource is 301 Moved Permanently! ...