Restul API (apiary.io like)

There have been a number of attempts to roll-your own restful APIs. In my case I’ve implemented my own JSON/Restful interface by heavily modifying David Jane’s MQTT code. The lack of effective documentation and debugging tools have limited what I could easily do.

The core problem is philosophical. Smartthings seems to be focused on an automation engine whereas I and others want a simple API such as Quirky has so that we can develop our own apps on our own devices. Even better, as I’ve mentioned a number of times, would be to be able to go directly to the hub.

I’m thinking of writing about such APIs in my next IEEE/CE [column][2] and would like to know more about Smartthings’ plans with regard to such interfaces as well as what others think and want.

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Is it supposed to be a link?

@bobfrankston, thanks for bringing this thread to my attention. I agree that philosophically it would be great to be able to take advantage of the same native OAuth’d SmartThings REST API that the ST mobile app, the PhysicalGraph Alfred workflow, etc, rely on. Hopefully, with as good or better documentation than Quirky provides through Apiary. I don’t think that should stand in opposition to allowing me to develop and deploy my own SmartApps with their own APIs a la ActiON Dashboard (which so far seems to be the most complete clone of the native SmartApps API). We shouldn’t need to clone the API just to accomplish a simple task.

Cheers,

Brandon

There seem to be a number of efforts to roll our own APIs hence the request for a single one. I started to experiment with using ActiON’s API but haven’t had a chance to spend much time on it yet. I got stuck on a cross-domain problem. There’s also the need for a notification API.

Adding @mager and @jim to this at the suggestion of ST support.