Aaron Feng

Since Shoechicken will provide RESTful web services, it is only natural to check out some existing web services that are already in the wild. One of the most well known web services that provides a REST API is the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

S3 provides web services that allow a subscriber to store and retrieve data. The subscriber is charged based on bandwidth and storage used. It is especially important for Amazon to validate your identity so you do not get falsely charged from unauthorized requests. Most important of all, you do not want your data to be compromised.

How does S3 validate your identity? When you sign up for S3 you will receive two keys: Access Key ID and Secret Access Key ID. Access Key ID is included in every request and before you put your request on the wire, you sign the header with your Secret Access Key ID. Of course, no one knows your Secret Access Key besides you and Amazon. This is fairly interesting because you can allow access to others by constructing the request for them.

Maybe we can do something similar to S3 in Shoechicken when the user wants to retrieve recommendations for his or her feeds.

For more information about S3 please refer to the official documentation.