Web script developers often work with remote sources of data. Surf makes it easy to reach out to these information sources and pull together feeds of data.
These data sources are typically RESTful providers, CMIS repositories, or proprietary in nature. Furthermore, each data source might require a unique set of credentials to work with the data source.
Surf lets you define connectors responsible for communicating with endpoints where a data source lives, such as a server residing at an HTTP address. Connectors connect to an endpoint and communicate with it.
Connectors are wired together with authenticators so that they can effectively handshake and establish credentials with endpoints. This pattern abstracts away any of the manual management of connection state that you would otherwise need to perform. Using authenticators, connectors manage user identity and session state to the endpoint. This is automatically managed for the duration of the user session in the Surf application itself.