Google Deprecates SOAP API

Michi writes "Brady Forrest at O'Reilly Radar reports that Google has deprecated their SOAP API; they aren't giving out any new SOAP Search API keys. Nelson Minar (the original author of the Google SOAP API) argues that this move is motivated by business reasons rather than technical ones. Does this mark the beginning of the end for SOAP or for ubiquitous middleware in general?" Forrest's post quotes developer Paul Bausch: "This is such a bad move because the Google API was the canonical example of how web services work. Not only is Google Hacks based on this API, but hundreds of other books and online examples use the Google API to show how to incorporate content from another site into a 3rd party application."

Comments

What about XMLRPC?

[Dynedain]

Does Google offer XMLRPC services?

If so, then I'd say it's fine to drop SOAP. XMLRPC is a bit cleaner anyways.

Re:What about XMLRPC?

[BrynM]

Does Google offer XMLRPC services?

The AJAX API might be what you're looking for.

Re:What about XMLRPC?

[BrynM]

There's also the Data API.

Re:Well it was 'just' a Beta

[RuBLed]

...not every other neat Google application. Maps is no longer in Beta as well as Google Earth and some other neat applications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_produc ts

Re:Don't be evil!

[FooAtWFU]

It needn't even be "non-AJAX". There are plenty of other possibilities for a web service API besides SOAP. The one I'm particularly well-acquainted with, and perhaps the biggest contender out there, is REST (REpresentational State Transfer). In particular, I recall one web developer howto-type site speaking about Amazon's SOAP-related services, and how most people don't use them, because they're an order of magnitude slower than most REST services.

Re:WTF is SOAP?

[omeomi]

SOAP (originally Simple Object Access Protocol) is a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over computer network, normally using HTTP. SOAP forms the foundation layer of the Web services stack, providing a basic messaging framework that more abstract layers can build on. The original acronym was dropped with Version 1.2 of the standard, which became a W3C Recommendation on June 24, 2003, as it was considered to be misleading. - Wikipedia.org

Re:bastards

[Sentry21]

He's not kidding - it's a good book too, I'd highly recommend it if you're doing web programming.

Drop-In Replacement Already Available

[feste12]

There's already a drop-in replacement for applications that are using Google's SOAP API. It scrapes Google's web results and returns them via a SOAP layer. The code behind it is free under the MIT License.

Good riddance.

[arcade]

Seriously. Good riddance. SOAP is a mess. Google has gone the XMLRPC way, and they're providing access via that.

This isn't google being evil. This is google removing a piece of completely unnecessary junk from their offerings. SOAP should never have seen the light of day, and google is now making sure that they do their part of burying it.

Power of SOAP

[Phil John]

The real power of SOAP comes when you are using a language or framework that has support for it builtin. SOAP is complex simply because it does more than XML-RPC with type handling etc.

In PHP you can use NuSOAP (or in 5.x the built-in SOAP library), to simply register some functions and autogenerate the WSDL, or generate a proxy from a given WSDL - takes a couple of minutes tops and then looks like you are simply calling another function.

Anyone who uses ASP.NET regularly has it even better - create an ASMX file, define a class and functions like you would in any C# class, add some namespace arguments, a [WebMethod] over all your public methods and it can then be instantiated and called from any other ASP.NET website or .NET dekstop app seamlessly, like it was a local class. It's really cool just how transparent it all is. You can even throw exceptions and catch them on the other side, pass back objects - it's really slick.

Re:Honeymoon is Over?

[awing0]

There is an eBay API. I've used it myself to create a few apps. It's a full featured XML over HTTP interface.

http://developer.ebay.com/common/api/

Re:Honeymoon is Over?

[tonigonenstein]

I the only one that cringes at using SOAP messages (or XML in general) for something that's supposed to be a machine-to-machine interaction? If you're going to write a new standard, why not write something more efficient?

No you're not. The sad thing is that before the invention of XML there already was a great standard for this: ASN.1, which is widely used in the telecommunication industry. ASN.1 allows one to represent hierarchical information, just like XML, but its advantage is that it defines several encodings: several binary encodings with different tradeoffs for efficient machine processing, and a text encoding for humans. You choose the best encoding for your application (which you can always change if you want), and you have standard tools to convert between encodings if necessary.
In this exemple, you could use a binary encoding for the wire protocol and a text encoding for the service description (which is normally written by a human). If you wanted to debug the wire communication you could intercept the binary encoding and convert it to the text encoding to present it to a human. Best of both worlds: efficient machine processing and possibility of human inspection if necessary.
Proposals for a binary xml are just attempts to recreate the ASN.1 functionnality of alternate encodings after the fact. Talk about wheel reinvention.