Early web development – Automated Hacks

Flickr API Origins: How 1995–1998 Web Scripting and CGI Shaped Media-Sharing Integrations (Chapter 85)

Flickr’s API arrived years after the web learned to stitch systems together. This chapter traces the 1995–1998 building blocks—forms, CGI, early JavaScript, and pragmatic “API-like” endpoints—that made media-sharing integrations possible.

HTTP as the Foundation of Web APIs (1995–1998): Browser Scripting, CGI, Forms, and the First Dynamic Integrations

From 1995 to 1998, web “APIs” weren’t usually JSON endpoints—they were HTML forms, CGI programs, and browser scripts exchanging parameters over HTTP. This chapter explains how HTTP’s request/response model became the durable foundation for web APIs.