get collection names through HTTP interface - mongodb

I would like to get collections' names with any HTTP interface available here : https://docs.mongodb.com/ecosystem/tools/http-interfaces/#http-interfaces
I tried with the simple API REST but I can only get databases' names and the number of collections, but not their name.
I also tried to use sleepy mongoose but I'm not really sure what I'm doing with this API so...
I ask this because I would like to have a HTTP Interface where the user can select one DB then the web-page displays every collections of this DB.
Thanks in advance ! I hope I was enough clear.

Just by using system.namespaces
http://127.0.0.1:28017/test/system.namespaces/

Related

How to properly access children by filtering parents in a single REST API call

I'm rewriting an API to be more RESTful, but I'm struggling with a design issue. I'll explain the situation first and then my question.
SITUATION:
I have two sets resources users and items. Each user has a list of item, so the resource path would like something like this:
api/v1/users/{userId}/items
Also each user has an isPrimary property, but only one user can be primary at a time. This means that if I want to get the primary user you'd do something like this:
api/v1/users?isPrimary=true
This should return a single "primary" user.
I have client of my API that wants to get the items of the primary user, but can't make two API calls (one to get the primary user and the second to get the items of the user, using the userId). Instead the client would like to make a single API call.
QUESTION:
How should I got about designing an API that fetches the items of a single user in only one API call when all the client has is the isPrimary query parameter for the user?
MY THOUGHTS:
I think I have a some options:
Option 1) api/v1/users?isPrimary=true will return the list of items along with the user data.
I don't like this one, because I have other API clients that call api/v1/users or api/v1/users?isPrimary=true to only get and parse through user data NOT item data. A user can have thousands of items, so returning those items every time would be taxing on both the client and the service.
Option 2) api/v1/users/items?isPrimary=true
I also don't like this because it's ugly and not really RESTful since there is not {userId} in the path and isPrimary isn't a property of items.
Option 3) api/v1/users?isPrimary=true&isShowingItems=true
This is like the first one, but I use another query parameter to flag whether or not to show the items belonging to the user in the response. The problem is that the query parameter is misleading because there is no isShowingItems property associated with a user.
Any help that you all could provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
There's no real standard solution for this, and all of your solutions are in my mind valid. So my answer will be a bit subjective.
Have you looked at HAL for your API format? HAL has a standard way to embed data from one resources into another (using _embedded) and it sounds like a pretty valid use-case for this.
The server can decide whether to embed the items based on a number of criteria, but one cheap solution might be to just add a query parameter like ?embed=items
Even if you don't use HAL, conceptually you could still copy this behavior similarly. Or maybe you only use _embedded. At least it's re-using an existing idea over building something new.
Aside from that practical solution, there is nothing in un-RESTful about exposing data at multiple endpoints. So if you created a resource like:
/v1/primary-user-with-items
Then this might be ugly and inconsistent with the rest of your API, but not inherently
'not RESTful' (sorry for the double negative).
You could include a List<User.Fieldset> parameter called fieldsets, and then include things if they are specified in fieldsets. This has the benefit that you can reuse the pattern by adding fieldsets onto any object in your API that has fields you might wish to include.
api/v1/users?isPrimary=true&fieldsets=items

How to filter REST API JSON result by passing params

I'm trying to consume JIRA 2 API and trying to get custom fields. I want to further filter by passing appropriate criteria in URI itself. Current query I'm using is something similar to this:
http://localhost:8522/jira522/rest/api/2/issue/createmeta?expand=projects.issuetypes.fields
The result I'm getting from above request is about 2000 lines.. How can I further filter to get only Custom_fields and also under custom fields I need to only the ones which are required?
I'm pretty new to REST API. Please guide me If anything is wrong... TIA. I spent a lot of time browsing but don't know what exactly I need to search for or where exactly I need to get started.
You can use another queryParam just like expand and add further filtering or pagination.
http://localhost:8522/jira522/rest/api/2/issue/createmeta?expand=projects.issuetypes.fields&limit=1000

REST url proper format

my REST API format:
http://example.com/api/v1.0/products - get all products
http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/3 - get product with id=3
Also, the products can be orginized into a product groups.
What is a proper way to get all product groups according to REST best practices:
http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/groups
or
http://example.com/api/v1.0/productgroups
...
another option ?
I can't agree with Rishabh Soni because http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/groups may lead to ambiguity.
I would put my money on http://example.com/api/v1.0/productgroups or even better http://example.com/api/v1.0/product_groups (better readability).
I've had similar discussion here: Updating RESTful resources against aggregate roots only
Question: About the thing of /products/features or /product-features,
is there any consensus on this? Do you know any good source to ensure
that it's not just a matter of taste?
Answer: I think this is misleading. I would expect to get all features
in all products rather than get all possible features. But, to be
honest, it’s hard to find any source talking directly about this
problem, but there is a bunch of articles where people don’t try to
create nested resources like /products/features, but do this
separately.
So, we can't be sure http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/groups will return all possible groups or just all groups that are connected with all existing products (what about a group that has not been connected with the product yet?).
To avoid this ambiguity, you can add some annotation in documentation. But you can just prepare http://example.com/api/v1.0/product_groups and all is clear.
If you are developing Rest API for your clients than you should not rely on id's. Instead build a meaningful abbreviation and map them to actual id on server side.
If that is not possible, instead of using
http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/3 you can use http://example.com/api/v1.0/products?product_id=3 and then you can provide "product_id" description in the documentation. basically telling the client ways to use product_id.
In short a url must be meaningful and follow a pattern.The variable part must be send by in the url query(part after ? or POST payload)
With this, method to querying the server is also important. If client is trying to get something to the server he should use "GET" http request, similar POST http request if it is uploading new info and "PUT" request if it is updating or creating a new resource.
So by this analogy http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/groups is more appropriate as it is following a pattern(groups in product) while productgroups is more like a keyword with no pattern.
A directory like pattern is more easier to understand. Like in file systems(C:\Program Files\WinRAR), every part gets us to more generalized target.
You can also customize this for specific group- http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/groups?id=3

MongoDB ObjectId foreign key implementation recommendation

I'm looking for a recommendation on how best to implement MongoDB foreign key ObjectId fields. There seem to be two possible options, either containing the nested _id field or without.
Take a look at the fkUid field below.
{'_id':ObjectId('4ee12488f047051590000000'), 'fkUid':{'_id':ObjectId('4ee12488f047051590000001')} }
OR
{'_id':ObjectId('4ee12488f047051590000000'), 'fkUid':ObjectId('4ee12488f047051590000001')} }
Any recommendations would be much appreciated.
I'm having a hard time coming up with any possible advantages for putting an extra field "layer" in there, so I would personally just store the ObjectId directly in fkUid.
I suggest to use default dbref implementation, that is described here http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Database+References and is compatible with most of specific language drivers.
If your question is about the naming of the field (what you have in the title), usually the convention is to name it after the object to which it refers.
The both ways that you have mentioned are one of the same meaning. But they have different kind of usages.
Storing fkUid like 'fkUid':{'_id':ObjectId('4ee12488f047051590000001')} an object has it's own pros. Let me give an example, Suppose there is a website where users can post images and view images posted by other users as well. But when showing the image the website also shows the name/username of the user. By using this way you also can store the details like 'fkUid':{'_id':ObjectId('4ee12488f047051590000001'), username: 'SOME_X'}. When you are getting details from the db you don't have to send a request again to get the username for the specific _id.
Where as in the second way 'fkUid':ObjectId('4ee12488f047051590000001')} } you have to send another request to the server only for getting the name/username and nothing else is useful from the same object.

Exposing database query parameters via REST interface

I have the basics of a REST service done, with "standard" list and GET/POST/PUT/DELETE verbs implemented around my nouns.
However, the client base I'm working with also wants to have more powerful operations. I'm using Mongo DB on the back-end, and it'd be easy to expose an "update" operation. This page describes how Mongo can do updates.
It'd be easy to write a page that takes a couple of JSON/XML/whatever arguments for the "criteria" and the "objNew" parts of the Mongo update function. Maybe I make a page like http://myserver.com/collection/update that takes a POST (or PUT?) request, with a request body that contains that data. Scrub the input for malicious querying and to enforce security, and we're done. Piece of cake.
My question is: what's the "best" way to expose this in a RESTful manner? Obviously, the approach I described above isn't kosher because "update" isn't a noun. This sort of thing seems much more suitable for a SOAP/RPC method, but the rest of the service is already using REST over HTTP, and I don't want users to have to make two different types of calls.
Thoughts?
Typically, I would handle this as:
url/collection
url/collection/item
GET collection: Returns a representation of the collection resource
GET collection/item: Returns a representation of the item resource
(optional URI params for content-types: json, xml, txt, etc)
POST collection/: Creates a new item (if via XML, I use XSD to validate)
PUT collection/item: Update an existing item
DELETE collection/item: Delete an existing item
Does that help?
Since as you're aware it isn't a good fit for REST, you're just going to have to do your best and invent a standard to make it work. Mongo's update functionality is so far removed from REST, I'd actually allow PUTs on the collection. Ignore the parameters in my examples, I haven't thought too hard about them.
PUT collection?set={field:value}
PUT collection?pop={field:1}
Or:
PUT collection/pop?field=1