Re: Checkout API spec published

Hey Manu (and Dave) -

Thanks for putting this together so quickly! I'll need a couple of days to
review everything, but will follow up in the next couple of days with
comments and feedback, hopefully before our WG call on Thursday.

Thanks,

-Zach


On Sun, Feb 7, 2016 at 7:44 PM, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
wrote:

> Hey folks,
>
> Dave Longley and I tried to see what his Checkout API proposal[1] would
> look like applied to the Google/Microsoft spec proposal. This was mainly
> for our own edification, but the result seemed like it might be useful
> to the group, so we're publishing it to see what others think.
>
> Here's the result:
>
> https://wicg.github.io/web-payments-browser-api/checkout-api.html
>
> * The Checkout API seems to address the use cases that we heard from
>   Zach (make the payment flow much nicer and unified for payers,
>   make control of the flow something the browser handles, etc.)
> * There is a nice and clean separation between the high-level
>   Checkout API and the low-level PaymentRequest API. This follows
>   many of the principles in the Extensible Web Manifesto that many
>   W3C API developers are trying to adhere to these days.
> * We were able to convert all of the APIs to a purely promise-based
>   system (no events, no external state management), which should
>   be much easier for developers to use and which don't have the
>   downside of having possible race conditions.
> * We future-proofed the shipping address collection in the event
>   that the Verifiable Claims work generates something this
>   API can use (there is a clear path to switch to the new model
>   if there is benefit).
>
> Here's the process we followed:
>
> 1. We took the base Google/Microsoft Payment Request API proposal
>    and copied the entire document into another WICG repository (to
>    ensure there were no issues w/ IPR).
> 2. We merged the Checkout API proposal into the PaymentRequest API.
> 3. We then started removing the bits that were redundant wrt. the
>    lower-level payments API, which simplified the API quite a bit.
> 4. We were also able to entirely remove the event and state machine
>    bits from the API, which simplified the API further.
>
> To be clear:
>
> * We are not "forking" the Google/Microsoft spec nor do we intend to
>   maintain this as an alternate spec unless the WG decides that it
>   likes the direction, and even in that case, we'd like AdrianB and
>   Zach to keep editing it (with us as backup editors).
> * This is experimental and is an attempt to harmonize all of the
>   discussion in issues and spec proposals currently on the table.
>
> -- manu
>
> [1]https://github.com/w3c/webpayments/wiki/Checkout-API
>
> --
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: Web Payments: The Architect, the Sage, and the Moral Voice
> https://manu.sporny.org/2015/payments-collaboration/
>
>