PeterHarding at 01:28, 25 January 2008

2008-01-25T01:28:49Z

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			[[Category:Internet]][[Category:Development]]

PeterHarding: New page: = Yahoo! Pipes brings mashups to the masses = === Tony Patton, TechRepublic === The Yahoo! Pipes project facilitates mashup creation via an easy-to-use interface. My first introduction to...

2007-12-12T02:48:30Z

New page: = Yahoo! Pipes brings mashups to the masses = === Tony Patton, TechRepublic === The Yahoo! Pipes project facilitates mashup creation via an easy-to-use interface. My first introduction to...

New page

= Yahoo! Pipes brings mashups to the masses =
=== Tony Patton, TechRepublic ===

The Yahoo! Pipes project facilitates mashup creation via an easy-to-use
interface. My first introduction to the concept was with the UNIX
platform. UNIX Pipes allows you to route output from one process to
another process as its input; that is, you can easily route data through a
series of loosely connected applications. This simple definition is the
core concept behind the Yahoo! Pipes project.

== What is Pipes? ==

Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and
create data mashups using a visual editor. The visual editor is a key
component as it, theoretically, makes the service accessible to
non-programmers. You may use Pipes within your Web applications, or you may
publish and share your mashups as Web services without ever having to write
a line of code.

In practice, this means that you can use Pipes to pick a few feeds or APIs
to retrieve data from, set up rules for processing the data that is
provided by those feeds, prompt for user input in your processing, and
then output the processed results as another feed or object format for use
in your own applications. In the simplest case, you can apply some
straightforward rules to a feed and then subscribe to the end result.

== The editor ==

One of the best features of Yahoo! Pipes is the user interface. It
provides a drag-and-drop user interface to create your own Pipes. Even if
you don't like the tool, you will be impressed with the editor. It allows
you to create your own Pipes by using predefined items called modules on a
toolbar on the left portion of the screen. Modules are the tools that
enable the mixing, sorting, and merging of different data sources. The
following list provides a sampling of the available options for building
your own Pipes:

* Sources: Data inputs are set up using Sources. You can pull in RSS or Atom feed that may be accessed via HTTP.
* User inputs: You can specify input for a Pipe. The values may be numbers, URL, location, text, or date.
* Operators: There are a variety of pre-defined operators that may be used to process data. This includes loops, sorting, union, and so forth.
* Url: This module facilitates the creation of custom URLs that pass data to other modules.
* String: This module provides various string operations such as regular expressions, translation, replace, and concatenation.
* Date: This module provides functionality for formatting and building dates.
* Number: This module provides simple math functions like addition and subtraction that can be used to manipulate data.

You may drag and drop these modules to the screen's layout area. Lines are
used to connect modules together (i.e., using the output of one module as
the input for another). The editor includes buttons that allow you to work
with Pipes, such as create a new one, save your work, create a copy of the
currently open Pipe, and view/edit properties of a Pipe.

The screen's bottom portion is a debugger area that provides feedback.
The debugger allows you to step through your modules one at a time and
view the data at each step -- allowing you to easily track down any
issues or problems that may occur. The editor uses a tabbed interface, so
you can work on multiple Pipes at one time -- each opened within its own
tab.

A simple example of a Pipe is using an RSS feed as the data source (Source
module). Each data item in the RSS feed can be processed in a loop
(Operators module). Each data item in the loop may be used as an input for
a Yahoo! search (Source module). The output of the Yahoo! search using data
items from the RSS feed is the output of the Pipe. The Pipe output may be
consumed as RSS or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). In fact, you may
publish the Pipe for others to use. This is a simple example, but it does
provide a peek at its functionality.

== Considerations ==

While the tool is described as easy to use, it still requires a bit of
technical knowledge to properly use. For instance, you need to be familiar
with URLs and their various parts if you want to take advantage of the User
inputs modules; it also requires some expertise to work with the various
data types and other features. While you don't have to be a hard-core
developer, you must have a good understanding of the Web.

A big issue with this type of tool is browser support, especially given
its impressive interface. Basically, there are some compatibility issues
with older versions of some browsers. With this tool, it helps to have the
latest version of any browser. I have used it with Internet Explorer 7 and
Firefox 1.5 and 2 with no problems.

== Centralise data ==

Yahoo! Pipes is simple and accessible to use. The visual editor makes it
easy to jump in without any coding. It embraces Web 2.0 concepts as it
facilitates the creation of new Web services or feeds using existing
components or sites. It allows you to combine them in novel ways to
provide whatever is needed.

Yahoo Pipes - Revision history

PeterHarding at 01:28, 25 January 2008

PeterHarding: New page: = Yahoo! Pipes brings mashups to the masses = === Tony Patton, TechRepublic === The Yahoo! Pipes project facilitates mashup creation via an easy-to-use interface. My first introduction to...