The Web is slowly but surely changing from a model in which a human reader browses content on web pages to a model in which services and clients (not necessarily humans) exchange information. And because of this, author Silvia Puglisi explains, it makes more sense to build platforms instead of just products or applications. Platforms are like ecosystems interconnecting different applications, services, users, developers, and partners, and offer many benefits.

In this book, you'll learn how to design and develop Representational State Transfer (REST) platforms in Rails. You'll begin with an introduction to Ruby on Rails, and then move quickly through new concepts. At the end of each chapter, you'll have learned something new about building and organically extending a multi-service platform spanning different devices—and will have had some fun in the process. By the end of the book you'll know how to build an architecture composed of different services accessing shared resources through a set of collaborating APIs and applications.

• Explore the basics of REST and HTTP, including REST architecture and the role of hypermedia
• Get to know Rails and Ruby on Rails
• Learn about API development and create an API
• Take a thorough look at REST, including Asynchronous REST and testing RESTful services
• Work with data streams as you map them onto an application UI and integrate external APIs in your application
• Learn about device-independent development
• Use data analytics to recognize important events, develop key metrics, and track them
• Explore various tools you can use to build your own data analytic platform
• Learn how to scale a Rails application successfully
• Examine privacy and security issues and the implications of handling and collecting user data