Scott Chats up .Net in a Web 2.x World (.NET APIs for Digg, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Google/GData, Live, Twitter, XML-RPC)

Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com - The Weekly Source Code 22 - C# and VB .NET Libraries to Digg, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Live Services, Google and other Web 2.0 APIs

"Someone emailed me recently saying that they couldn’t find enough examples in .NET for talking to the recent proliferation of “Web 2.0 APIs” so I thought I’d put together a list and look at some source. I think that a nice API wrapper is usually a useful thing, but since these APIs are so transparent and basic, there's not really a huge need given LINQ to XML but I understand the knee-jerk reaction to hunt for a wrapper when faced with the word "API."

One thing to point out is that 99.9% of these APIs are calling

HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);

under the covers the doing something with the resulting string. Some hide the URL creation, some use XmlDocuments, others use XmlSerialization. When you use a random API you find on the net you're usually getting what you pay for. You're getting a one person's free view on how they perceived a certain API should be called. Some will like be more performant than others. Some might be better thought out than others.

I'll try to juxtapose a few differences between them, but I just want you to remember that we're talking about pushing Angle Brackets around, and little else. You can always do it yourself.

And so, Dear Reader, I present to you twenty-first in a infinite number of posts of "The Weekly Source Code."

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Scott provides a number of simple samples for many different .NET assemblies/libraries/components that help make your Web 2.x development life easier...