A consulting client will provide a REST API and I need to connect to it through a locally installed on-premises Matlab (not Matlab Production Server), download and crunch some data and then send the results back.
I don't have experience with REST API yet so please excuse if I am mixing terms.
Right now I am trying to understand which is the relevant documentation for me and there are two options I am looking at:
The methods listed here - https://nl.mathworks.com/help/matlab/internet-file-access.html?s_tid=CRUX_lftnav , all relate to a RESTful Web Service. I don't know yet if the client has a REST API that can be categorized as a web service (I am going to use it to access some client data) - would anybody know what the 'standard' use case for a REST API is and if it will likely be considered as a 'web service'? I guess the 'web' service part refers to the HTTP protocol and it does need to be a website?
Then there is a bunch of documentation related specifically for the Matlab Production Server, which seems to me to be a more general version of dealing with REST APIs - https://nl.mathworks.com/help/mps/restful-api-and-json.html
However, if I understand it well, the second option is exclusive to MPS (and this is not what we will be using to access the API - we will be using standard Matlab Standalone desktop version)
Appreciate any help and clarifications!
p.s. I have read REST api vs REST Webservice vs RESTFul web service and that has cleared some questions on the difference between REST Api and REST API web service but it is still somewhat unclear in my head.
Sounds like you want to use webread and webwrite.
The MPS stuff is where MATLAB acts as the REST API, i.e. MATLAB is the server...
With webread and webwrite you can read/write data to/from an external server that's nothing to do with MATLAB.
Related
I'm new to the concept of REST. And so far I've used a REST client (Advanced REST client) to make all the requests. But I don't understand the point of it all if I have to use a REST client to access the web service. I mean how then is a layman supposed to access a web service in his browser? And can browsers at all access access web services? If yes then why do I need a REST client?
The layman access a REST service all the time, when they access a web site (though many web sites violate REST principles to varying degrees). The REST architectural style was arrived at by examining why HTTP worked well, and was then used the conclusions to influence how HTTP 1.1 improved on 1.0.
They aren't expected to access a REST web-service, because a web-service is a service which uses the properties used by websites to provide machine-readable rather than human-readable data. A RESTful web-service tries to do this by taking advantages of how HTTP works and working with that. (The earliest "web services" seemingly started with the assumption that the web was a failure and needed to be coerced into working with the sort of RPC model that had been used previously, despite the fact that if this was true there'd be no advantage in using the web rather than the existing RPC protocols).
The layman therefore would more likely use an application that in turn used web services (whether that application was a web application, desktop, mobile, or whatever). The layman uses them the same way that they use any programming techniques; they use something devs built using them.
And can browsers at all access access web services?
Often they can get at least read-only access and sometimes a bit more. When this is the case it can be extremely useful for debugging.
I've just started on a small project to create some REST services using Google App Engine and Java. I'm new to both technologies, but I've done some reading on both. I'm familiar with SOAP (have used them previously), and I think I understand the conceptual differences between REST and SOAP.
Currently I need info regarding two things:
1) I'm trying to find some tutorial which builds a simple REST service from scratch for deploying on Google App Engine (GAE). The simpler the better, but it should have at least a few routing options. I don't need any UI, if that matters.
2) Which RESTful Framework should I use with Google App Engine. Again, simplicity is what I'd like, and something which has tutorials and a newcomer can easily grasp.
My ultimate goal is to just write a REST wrapper with multiple routing options, which eventual consumes some pre-existing SOAP services and returns their results.
Have you checked out Google Cloud Endpoints for creating a REST service? Its pretty simple and straightforward, also has support for OAuth.
I would give Jello framework a try. It offers a clean, and simple to follow, JSON format and provides a very powerful and comprehensive RESTful implementation that follows the OData specification.
Here is Jello's REST development guide: http://jello-framework.com/guide/rest.html
What are some web apps that allow me to play with any REST APIs visually (by clicking) and also get some code generated (in any language) that captures what I have described visually?
Similar to Swagger or Google API Playground but allows me to talk to anything that speaks REST (assuming I have the proper auth credentials and I know what messages it understands).
Bonus points for something that can also "discover" what messages are understood, given a URL endpoint.
Microsoft has 2 that I know of
OData API explorer
The data market service explorer (requires signing in, and then you can access free data sets)
Considering that REST API's are going to follow their own conventions, terms, and have their own documentation (hopefully), this is an impossible problem. If you restrict your quest to visualizing API's that follow a "standard" form of self-documentation (see REST web service WSDL? for some hopeful scenarios) you might be able to accomplish this.
Or you can use something like http://www.programmableweb.com/ to discover tutorials, tools, examples, and mashups of various existing APIs.
You could mock an API at http://apiary.io/.
You could explore and existing one through tools (e.g. REST Console for Chrome)
What you can't have, is one-size-fits-all explorer for "every possible REST API." Some APIs follow conventions that others don't.
apigee and apihub (now part of mulesoft) are two that I frequently visit. Of the two, apigee is my preferred provider.
One of the reasons that you're not going to see a lot of websites like this is because of the same-origin policy. This means that you can't access a RESTful API located at api.google.com from a web app running at, say, www.restfiddle.com without sending all the API traffic through restfiddle.com's servers. Sites like JSFiddle can exist (and are used widely) because all the processing is done on the client side.
Browser plugins, however, are exempt from the same-origin policy. If you're using Chrome, try Postman. If your REST client doesn't need to be web-based, check out SoapUI. IntelliJ IDEA has a nice REST client as well.
Try Restlet Studio, it's the only visual API designer I've found, and seems pretty good, it imports and exports swagger & RAML.
http://studio.restlet.com/
I know very little about web programming but I need to establish a license generation web service to provide licenses to users of my desktop software.
I have managed to create a working & debugged SOAP service on a Win2003 server but now I have discovered that the interface that I need to provide to my payment processor must be REST.
How would you recommend I deal with this, given that I simply don't have the time to learn PHP and rewrite my web service etc. I could bypass the SOAP altogether and easily create an executable which receives the license parameters and returns an encrypted license, but it's the web interface bit that I am stuck on. I will probably subcontract someone to write a utility for this on elance, but I don't know what to ask for.
Manu thanks,
Michael
You can expose the same service as SOAP based as well as RESTful. Axis2 with WSDL 2.0 has support for this.
Please see this article RESTful Web Services with Apache Axis2 - explains things in detail..
Thanks..
There's no easy conversion from SOAP to REST. SOAP WebServices RESTful APIs use different approaches. I think it is very easy to do with Ruby on Rails (which will take care of 90% of RESTful APi for you). All you need is to implement your logic.
Sinatra example:
get '/hi' do
"Hello World!"
end
I have been reading about REST and SOAP, and understand why implementing REST can be beneficial over using a SOAP protocol. However, I still don't understand why there isn't the "WSDL" equivalent in the REST world. I have seen posts saying there is "no need" for the WSDL or that it would be redundant In the REST world, but I don't understand why. Isn't it always useful to programmatically bind to a definition and create proxy classes instead of manually coding? I don't mean to get into a philosophical debate, just looking for the reason there is no WSDL in REST, or why it is not needed. Thanks.
The Web Application Description Language (WADL) is basically the equivalent to WSDL for RESTful services but there's been an ongoing controversy whether something like this is needed at all.
Joe Gregorio has written a nice article about that topic which is worth a read.
WSDL describes service endpoints. REST clients should not be coupled to server endpoints (i.e. should not be aware of in URLs in advance). REST clients are coupled on the media-types that are transfered between the client and server.
It may make sense to auto generate classes on the client to wrap around the returned media-types. However, as soon as you start to create proxy classes around the service interactions you start to obscure the HTTP interactions and risk degenerating back towards a RPC model.
RSDL aims to turn rest like a hypermedia, in other words, it has more information than a service descriptor like WSDL or WADL. For example, it has the information about navigation, like hypertext and hyperlinks.
For example, given a current resource, you have a set os links to another resources related.
However, i didn't find Rest Clients that supports this format or Rest Server Solutions with a feature to auto generate it.
I think there is a long way for a conclusion about it. See the HTML long story and W3C vs Browsers lol.
For more details about Rest like Hypermedia look it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS
Note : Roy Fielding has been criticizing these tendencies in Rest Apis without the hypermidia approach: http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven
My Conclusion : Now a Days, WADL is more common that Rest and Integration Frameworks like Camel CXF already supports WADL ( generate and consume ), because it is similar to WSDL, therefore most easy to understand in this migration process ( SOAP to REST ).
Let's see the next chapters ;)
Isn't it always useful to programmatically bind to a definition and
create proxy classes instead of manually coding?
Agree wholeheartedly, this is why I use Swagger.io
Swagger is a powerful open source framework backed by a large
ecosystem of tools that helps you design, build, document, and consume
your RESTful APIs.
So basically I use Swagger to describe my models, endpoints, etc, and then I use other tools like swagger-codegen to generate the proxy classes instead of manually coding it.
See also: RAML
There is an RSDL (restful service description language) which is equivalent to WSDL. The URL below describes its practice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSDL.
The problem is that we have lots of tool to generate code from wsdl to java, or reverse.
But I didn't find any tool to generate code from RSDL.
WSDL is extensible to allow description of endpoints and their messages regardless of what message formats or network protocols are used to communicate
However, REST uses the network protocol by using HTTP verbs and the URI to represent an objects state.
WSDLs tell you at this place, if you send this message, you'll perform this action and get this format back as a result.
In REST, if I wanted to create a new profile I would use the verb POST with a JSON body or http server variables describing my profile to the URL /profile
POST should return a server-side generated ID, using the status code 201 CREATED and the header Location: *new_profile_id* (for example 12345)
I can then perform updates changing the state of /profile/12345 using the HTTP verb POST, say to change my email addresss or phone number. Obviously changing the state of the remote object.
GET would return the current status of the /profile/12345
PUT is usually used for client-side generated ID
DELETE, obvious
HEAD, gets the status without returning the body.
With REST it should be self-documenting through a well designed API and thus easier to use.
This is a great article on REST. It really help me understand it too.
WSDL 2.0 specification has added support for REST web services too. Best of both worlds scenario. Problem is WSDL 2.0 is not widely supported by most tools out there yet. WSDL 2.0 is W3C recommended, WSDL1.1 is not W3C recommended but widely supported by tools and developers.
Ref:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-restwsdl/
The Web Application Description Language (WADL) is an XML vocabulary used to describe RESTful web services.
As with WSDL, a generic client can load a WADL file and be immediately equipped to access the full functionality of the corresponding web service.
Since RESTful services have simpler interfaces, WADL is not nearly as necessary to these services as WSDL is to RPC-style SOAP services.