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Bungee Jumping Between Sessions
Posted by
Curtis Gavin
in Developers Conference
Wednesday, Jun.13.2007, 5:13 AM PT
A fun thing happened while I and a couple colleagues were waiting for our next blogging/video taping gig. We stopped by the BungeeLabs booth to check out their web-based on-demand development environment, Bungee Connect. We heard it was cool, so wanted to see what it was all about.
The guys in the booth were super helpful. They showed us one of their quick demos and told us about the product. I wondered aloud what their connection was with eBay. It turns out they use our APIs as a sort of proof of concept and example. They were reluctant to use the eBay API for a demo, however, because of the size and complexity of the WSDL slows the development process.
My colleagues and I suggested they try our new eBay Shopping Web Services. The smaller WSDL and faster, more responsive APIs seemed like a good fit for demo'ing. They were up for the challenge.
Brad Hintze, Marketing Manager at BungeeLabs, took the controls. Brad new where to find the WSDL for the Trading API (http://developer.ebay.com/webservices/latest/eBaySvc.wsdl). The path to the WSDL for the Shopping API is the same, all he had to do was change the name of the WSDL file to ShoppingService.wsdl.
The next thing we needed to do was specify an AppID in the URL request sent by the application. Brad was used to sending user credentials in the call payload, but this change was simple. Brad quickly located the URL and added the AppID parameter.
We suggested he use FindItems in his application. We showed Brad how to build the URL with call name and parameters and then paste it into a web browser address field to test the call. Brad was used to working with a SOAP resonse, so we showed him how to set the call response format with the responseencoding URL parameter. Once we confirmed that the call worked, Brad started building the application UI.
Brad and Bungee Concept worked their magic. By dragging and dropping components and objects, Brad had a simple application running in minutes. The application had an input field to specify a search query. When you clicked the search button, the query results (item title, gallery URL, View Item URL, etc.) were displayed on the form.
Start to finish, this all took less than 20 minutes. Not bad for working with a new API. And, as Brad pointed out, we never left the web browser!
If you have a chance, check out what Bungee is offering.
-Curtis
