API, REST, SOAP, XML-RPC, WTF?!?!

[eluser]slowgary[/eluser]
Phil, Jedd - I appreciate the clarification. I've been googling as much as possible to understand more, but as I stated before, much of the information is a bunch of jargon with very little actual examples to illustrate.

I do think I understand enough to get by (although it's always nice to know which acronyms you can add to your resume), and I see that just like a lot of things, these are just ideas about how to get the job accomplished. In the end, whatever I feel most comfortable with as a solution will be what I do.

As for specifics, I'm scratching SOAP off my list as I'd prefer pure XML to the SOAP syntax. For all I know, SOAP syntax is pure XML, but as stated earlier - I tend to shy away from technologies that look foreign to me and the examples I've seen of SOAP objects look a lot uglier than a clean hierarchy of XML. That being said, I think as an input format I might skip both of those in favor of a lighter and easier set of POST variables.

I don't really get the REST idea using strictly the URL because of the limited URL length. Plus, CI style parameters makes it slightly more difficult to determine the pairing of key/value. Additionally, doesn't this method require parameters to be in a specific order?

Acronyms aside, I think I'll stick with regular old POST variables as input, and offer JSON and XML as output. I think this would be the best approach for me as I could cURL the API from other PHP scripts and access the response through a SimpleXML object, and I could call the API through AJAX and get the response as native JS.

Does this sound like a sound approach?

Also (slightly off topic) - if I implemented a simple username/password to authenticate users of the API, unauthorized users could simply view the javascript source and snatch credentials. Is there a better approach to securing usage of the API, or are most APIs open by nature?

Thanks again for all your replies, I feel like I've really learned something today.