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So I was immediately looking at their REST API... And true to form, Amazon adds yet another slightly incompatible request signing method. Consistency is for w

So I was immediately looking at their REST API... And true to form, Amazon adds yet another slightly incompatible request signing method. Consistency is for wimps.

eli 16y ago
I dare you to look at the API for some of the "traditional" email service providers. I've had the displeasure of working with a few from some of the big names and they are real DailyWTF material.
- jonknee 16y ago
  I have worked with Constant Contact and it was a Constant Headache. My favorite was when they took the API down for maintenance and maintained HTTP 200 OK status codes for requests but instead of XML returned it was an HTML page saying they were down. I took a screenshot of the page because it was so surprising: http://www.jongales.com/blog/2009/10/17/constant-contacts-insane-api-downtime-practice/ http://www.jongales.com/blog/2009/10/17/constant-contacts-in...
  - eli 16y ago
    EmailLabs/Lyris decided to invent their own XML-over-HTTP API format rather than use REST or even SOAP or anything else you might already have a library for. They combined this with a very poor understanding of how XML is supposed to work (lots of <DATA> tags) and return results that aren't guaranteed to validate. Dates are represented in one of six different formats depending on which particular function you're calling. If there's a problem, you might get an error, you might get back nothing. I could go on. Silverpop is similar.
    - biot 16y ago
      Have you had any experience with Exact Target, at the API level or other? And don't get me started about a certain email broadcaster vendor out of Seattle that starts with "what" and ends in "counts"... their idea of XML is to parse an entire file line-by-line and treat each line independently of the whole. So it kind of looks like XML... to a kid who just learned Java I suppose.
      - eapen 16y ago
        Care to explain what you think about Exact Target - I might have to deal with them and would appreciate any feedback you have of them.
        biot 16y ago
        I'm in the same boat as you. :)
      - Hemi 16y ago
        Without providing a biased opinion I thought the following link might help with your understanding of the ExactTarget API capabilities and structure - http://wiki.memberlandingpages.com/API_References http://wiki.memberlandingpages.com/API_References Hope this helps!
- aristidb 16y ago
  The API does not seem to be bad, really. It's just not consistent with other AWS APIs, which would simplify writing language bindings for them.
- haploid 16y ago
  Um, postmark? It's an extremely simple API to implement.
boundlessdreamz 16y ago
You can easily integrate it with postfix http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/index.html?IntegratingWithServer.Postfix.html http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/... That is awesome. So even without third part libs supporting this API I will be able to use this service

So I was immediately looking at their REST API... And true to form, Amazon adds yet another slightly incompatible request signing method. Consistency is for wimps.

eli 16y ago

I dare you to look at the API for some of the "traditional" email service providers. I've had the displeasure of working with a few from some of the big names and they are real DailyWTF material.

jonknee 16y ago
I have worked with Constant Contact and it was a Constant Headache. My favorite was when they took the API down for maintenance and maintained HTTP 200 OK status codes for requests but instead of XML returned it was an HTML page saying they were down. I took a screenshot of the page because it was so surprising: http://www.jongales.com/blog/2009/10/17/constant-contacts-insane-api-downtime-practice/ http://www.jongales.com/blog/2009/10/17/constant-contacts-in...
- eli 16y ago
  EmailLabs/Lyris decided to invent their own XML-over-HTTP API format rather than use REST or even SOAP or anything else you might already have a library for. They combined this with a very poor understanding of how XML is supposed to work (lots of <DATA> tags) and return results that aren't guaranteed to validate. Dates are represented in one of six different formats depending on which particular function you're calling. If there's a problem, you might get an error, you might get back nothing. I could go on. Silverpop is similar.
  - biot 16y ago
    Have you had any experience with Exact Target, at the API level or other? And don't get me started about a certain email broadcaster vendor out of Seattle that starts with "what" and ends in "counts"... their idea of XML is to parse an entire file line-by-line and treat each line independently of the whole. So it kind of looks like XML... to a kid who just learned Java I suppose.
    - eapen 16y ago
      Care to explain what you think about Exact Target - I might have to deal with them and would appreciate any feedback you have of them.
      - biot 16y ago
        I'm in the same boat as you. :)
    - Hemi 16y ago
      Without providing a biased opinion I thought the following link might help with your understanding of the ExactTarget API capabilities and structure - http://wiki.memberlandingpages.com/API_References http://wiki.memberlandingpages.com/API_References Hope this helps!
aristidb 16y ago
The API does not seem to be bad, really. It's just not consistent with other AWS APIs, which would simplify writing language bindings for them.
haploid 16y ago
Um, postmark? It's an extremely simple API to implement.

boundlessdreamz 16y ago

You can easily integrate it with postfix http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/index.html?IntegratingWithServer.Postfix.html http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/... That is awesome. So even without third part libs supporting this API I will be able to use this service