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The video above is from the SparkFun tutorial WiFly Wireless Talking SpeakJet Server.

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My day job involves automated software testing. One aspect of that job is testing Web Services.

What are Web Services?

Think of Web Services as a set of function calls (like an API or an SDK). But instead of calling a function within your program or a local library, you are calling a function on a Web Server. Just like with a function, you can specify parameters to be passed to a Web Service. You can also get a return value or multiple return values in the form of a response from the server. The response could be in any format, like JSON or XML which you could parse.

So you could design services like this:

http://myrobot/?action=forward&distance=5

That might generate a response like this:

{
“response”: “OK”
}

By taking this approach, you can control a robot from a Web browser on any device (laptop, smartphone, etc.). But you can also control a robot from with an application that wraps the Web service calls behind a UI.

For an example of how to do it, click the link in the video caption above.

You may also want to checkout the book Arduino Cookbook which covers this topic in more detail.