UPDATE, Sept 3, 2010: – After some discussion, the consensus is to make the language library naming even a bit easier for developers and move the module names from “tropo-webapi” to simply “tropo”. The table below has been updated to show the change.

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With the availability of the Tropo Web API, it’s been great to see the development of Tropo libraries for various programming languages, which let developers easily and quickly build Tropo apps for voice and SMS.  We now have Tropo Web API libraries available for Ruby, PHP, Python and C#:

http://github.com/tropo

However, as those libraries have evolved, we’ve found that they’ve developed in slightly different directions with regard to the naming of the repository on Github and to the module names, etc.  We gave some thought to the best way to provide guidance to make it easier on developers, and came up with these goals:

• Provide a consistent repo name so developers using multiple languages can easily locate their downloaded/cloned directories on their local systems.
• Provide consistent naming of module/library names and function/class names so developers can move with ease from one language to another. (Use case: a developer builds a Ruby app for one client for Tropo. Developer then needs to build a PHP app for another client. Developer should be able to move from one Tropo library to another without having to relearn or guess what the names are.)
• Allow for the future creation of additional Tropo-related modules/libraries

To get there, the existing repositories are going to migrate to these new names:

• http://github.com/tropo/tropo-webapi-ruby
• http://github.com/tropo/tropo-webapi-php
• http://github.com/tropo/tropo-webapi-python
• http://github.com/tropo/tropo-webapi-ruby

Going forward, we’ll ask that anyone creating a new Tropo Web API module please follow this same naming convention.

We’re also going to move the names of the actual modules to be more consistent. The result will be something like:

Ruby	require ‘tropo-webapi-ruby’ require ‘tropo’
PHP	require ‘tropo-webapi.class.php’; require ‘tropo.class.php’;
python	import tropo_webapi import tropo
C#	using TropoCSharp.TropoWebAPI; using TropoCSharp.Tropo;

You’ll note that we’re treating “webapi” as one word in the names. (Note: These may be the final names, but they may change as the changes get made to each library.)

We’re in the process of working with the library authors to make these changes now.  The migration is a pain, quite honestly, because it’s going to break existing applications, samples, tests, etc., but we want to do this once so as these modules start to get more widely used, there is a good degree of consistency between them.

We’ll let you know as the libraries are moved over to the new convention – and please let us know now if you have any feedback on this issue.

Thanks – and we’re definitely looking forward to continuing to see the awesome apps you all are building with Tropo!

Related posts:

1. Even Simpler Guidelines for Tropo Web API Language Libary Naming
2. Python Tropo WebAPI Library Now Available in PyPI for Easy Installation
3. Want to build voice, SMS, IM and Twitter apps in python? Tropo WebAPI library now available
4. HOWTO: Working with the Python 3 branch of the Tropo Python Web API library
5. Updated Version of the Python Module for the Tropo WebAPI

Tags: C#, PHP, Python, Ruby, webapi

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