GitHub’s API-driven automations didn’t appear out of nowhere. In 1995–1998, browser scripting, CGI endpoints, and HTML forms quietly established the practical patterns—requests, payloads, authentication, polling, and event notifications—that modern developer workflows now take for granted.
Stripe feels modern, but its developer-first approach has deep roots in 1995–1998: HTML forms, CGI scripts, early JavaScript, and the first mainstream patterns for integrating dynamic services on the web.
Long before EventSource and Server-Sent Events, developers in 1995–1998 tried to keep web pages “live” using CGI, forms, frames, and early browser scripting—laying conceptual groundwork for streaming web APIs.
A focused look at 1995–1998: CGI and forms as de facto APIs, early JavaScript as a client-side interface layer, and why these patterns mattered long before the Canvas API existed.
RSS (late 1990s) and Atom (later) are often remembered as “blogging features,” but their real legacy is API-shaped: a stable URL that returns structured, machine-readable updates. This chapter traces how 1995–1998 browser scripting, CGI, and form-driven web apps created the practical and cultural prerequisites for syndication APIs.
From CGI scripts to browser scripting and form-driven endpoints, 1995–1998 shaped early developer access control patterns that foreshadowed modern API keys—often implemented with shared secrets, IP allowlists, and basic auth.
Long before Facebook exposed a social graph to developers, the web learned how to pass identity, state, and structured inputs through HTML forms, CGI scripts, cookies, and early JavaScript. This chapter traces the 1995–1998 API-shaped habits that later became essential to Facebook Platform APIs.
JSON wasn’t on the scene yet, but the web’s need for lightweight data exchange was already shaping API behavior. From HTML forms and CGI to JavaScript, cookies, and early dynamic pages (1995–1998), this chapter traces the pre-JSON techniques that taught the web how to talk in compact name/value pairs.
Before XMLHttpRequest and the term AJAX existed, developers in 1995–1998 used browser scripting, CGI, forms, and clever page-integration tricks to simulate “dynamic” web apps. This chapter shows the web APIs and constraints that made XHR feel inevitable.
From CGI scripts to browser scripting, HTML forms in the mid-to-late 1990s quietly established a repeatable client-to-server contract—an early pattern that looks surprisingly like today’s web APIs.