I know for getting a data we have to use a GET request. But this time I have to send a XML document (who will not be stored) for getting the data. What are the best practice in this case ?
You need send a xml document to your end-point to get your interested data.
As you need a xml doc, it has to be a POST REST end-point. (On a side note, sending any file contents as part of GET parameters is a bad design practice.)
Related
I'm writing a stateless API. You send it a document, it processes the document, and then returns the processed document. I'm struggling to understand how the RESTFUL rules apply. I'm not retrieving data, creating data or updating data on the server. There is no data on the server. What do I need to use in this case as the http method and why?
Good news - you are right that it is confusing.
Nothing on the server changes in response to the request. That suggests that the request is safe. So GET is the natural choice here... BUT -- GET doesn't support message payloads
A payload within a GET request message has no defined semantics; sending a payload body on a GET request might cause some existing implementations to reject the request.
HEAD, the other ubiquitous safe method, has the same problem (and is unsuitable when you want to return a document in any case).
The straight forward thing to do at this point is just use POST. It's important to realize that POST doesn't promise that a request is unsafe, only that it doesn't promise that it is safe -- generic components won't know that the request is safe, and won't be able to take advantage of that.
Another possibility is to look through the method registry, to see if somebody has already specified a method that has the semantics that you want. Candidates include SEARCH and REPORT, from the WebDAV specifications. My read of those specifications is that they don't actually have the right semantics for your case.
A Lot of ways to do what you want. But here is a small guideline.
I would create an endpoint that receives the document:
/receive_document
with a 'POST' method. Since you are 'sending' your document to the server
I would create an endpoint that serves up the processed document:
/processed_document
with a 'GET' method. Since you want to retrieve / see your document from the server?
The problem that you are trying to solve is mainly related to the document size, and processing time before returning the response.
Theorically, in order to use a restful approach, you have an endpoint, like yourhost.com/api/document-manager (it can be a php script, or whatever you are using as backend).
OK, so instead of naming the endpoint differently for each operation type, you just change the HTTP method, I'll try to make an example:
POST: used to upload the document, returns 200 OK when the upload is completed.
GET: returns the processed document, you can also return a different HTTP code, in case the document is not ready or even different if the document hasn't been uploaded. 204 no content or 412 precondition failed can be good candidates in case of unavailable document. I'm not sure about the 412, seems like it's returned when you pass a header in the request, that tells the server which resource to return. In your case, I think that the user processes one document at time. But to make a more solid api, maybe you can return an ID token to the user, into the POST response, then forward that token to the GET request, so the server will be able to know exactly which file the user is requesting.
PUT: this method should be used when updating a resource that has been already created with POST
DELETE: removes a resource, then return 204 or 404
OPTIONS: the response contains the allowed methods on this endpoint. You can use it to know for example which privileges has the currently logged user on a resource.
HEAD: is the same as a GET call, but it shouldn't return the response body. This is another good candidate for you to know when the document has been processed. You can upload with POST, then when the upload is done, start some kind of polling to the same endpoint with the HEAD method, finally when it will return "found", the polling will stop, and make the final GET call, which will start the download of the processed document.
HTTP methods are a neat way of managing HTTP communications, if used properly are the way to go, and easily understandable by other developers. And not to forget, you don't have to invent lots of different names for your endpoints, one is enough.
Hope that this helped you a little... But there are loads of guides on the net.
Bye!
this might be a stupid question but I was unable to find a solution, also no luck with search.
My Node-Red flow gets triggered by a HTTP Input because I want to create a REST Webservice. It works fine so far but I wonder how to verify the content someone send to me.
As I see right now, I can pass any kind of content. There is no verification if the content matches to the content I want as input.
If I set content-type to application/json, it only accepts json data. That's great but I also want to ensure, users can post only a specific json string.
If someone sends data I'm unable to proceed (not the json object I expected), I want to send HTTP 400 as response.
I'm pretty new to Node-Red and also to json. I'm more an old-school programmer using classic webservices and soap. What I'm missing is some kind of WSDL (not sure if it exists when using REST) and some kind of payload validation.
It would be great if someone can point me the way to go.
Best regards
Patrick
There are some nodes available for doing schema validation on JSON objects.
For example, node-red-contrib-json-schema-validator - which uses ajv as the validation engine under the covers. Unfortunately this node doesn't come with much in the way of help. Essentially it lets you provide your schema and if a message fails to validate, it logs an error which can be handled with a Catch node if you want.
I found the issue. It was too bad.
I just forgotten to set HTTP Header content-type to application/json.
node-red-contrib-json-schema-validator works like a charm if content type is set corret
I use fiddler core to intercept the request and provide a response to it. I know its possible to use saz files to save the response. But the problem is that I need to be able to customize the response. While its a saz file I cant customize the response manually.
Is there a way to save response caught by fiddler to a text file in json like format, so that I could edit it and could serve it as response to any request using fiddler core? For now i see I can save response as a plain text. But how do I load this request to fiddler or parse it with fiddler core to populate all the response properties? Is there some format I could use, that will allow me to manually edit the response?
UPDATE
I see I can just open saz archive, make my edits to reponse and use it to specify the response. Thats exactly what I was looking for. Also there is a way to save response session as har file. Is it possible to save one single response as har/saz file? Currently I can only save session and it contain all requests and responses. Is there a way to limit saved data to 1 request and 1 response?
You have a SAZ file, which contains the full content of a response. Your code may load the SAZ File into FiddlerCore using the Utilities.ReadSessionArchive method. You will then have an array of Session objects.
As FiddlerCore receives requests, you can evaluate whether or not you wish to reply to each request using a previously-loaded response or whether you want to instead let the request flow through to the server. To let the request flow through to the server, do nothing.
To return a previously-generated response, in FiddlerCore 2.4.6.4+ (not yet released), simply call utilAssignResponse on the new Session. For earlier versions of FiddlerCore without this new method, your OnBeforeRequest method should call a method that looks something like this:
public void utilAssignResponse(Session oS, HTTPResponseHeaders oRH, byte[] arrBody)
oS.utilCreateResponseAndBypassServer();
oS.oResponse.headers = (HTTPResponseHeaders)oRH.Clone();
oS.responseBodyBytes = arrBody ?? Utilities.emptyByteArray;
oS.oFlags["x-Fiddler-Generated"] = "Generated by myCode";
}
Hi,
I am a newbie to Backbone, My Rest Server Components Accept Only XML Requests, can Anybody show an example how do i send a xml to a rest api put request.
Backbone uses JSON by default, so to use XML you need to overwrite Backbone.sync. Take a look at this answer: How to override Backbone.sync?
We are trying to implement a REST API for an application we have now. We want to expose read/write capabilities for various resources using the REST API. How do we implement the "form" part of this? I get how to expose "read" of our data by creating RESTful URLs that essentially function as method calls and return the data:
GET /restapi/myobject?param=object-id-maybe
...and an XML document representing some data structure is returned. Fine.
But, normally, in a web application, an "edit" would involve two requests: one to load the current version of the resources and populate the form with that data, and one to post the modified data back.
But I don't get how you would do the same thing with HTTP methods that REST is sort of mapped to. It's a PUT, right? Can someone explain this?
(Additional consideration: The UI would be primarily done with AJAX)
--
Update: That definitely helps. But, I am still a bit confused about the server side? Obviously, I am not simply dealing with files here. On the server, the code that answers the requests should be filtering the request method to determine what to do with it? Is that the "switch" between reads and writes?
There are many different alternatives you can use. A good solution is provided at the microformats wiki and has also been referenced by the RESTful JSON crew. As close as you can get to a standard, really.
Operate on a Record
GET /people/1
return the first record
DELETE /people/1
destroy the first record
POST /people/1?_method=DELETE
alias for DELETE, to compensate for browser limitations
GET /people/1/edit
return a form to edit the first record
PUT /people/1
submit fields for updating the first record
POST /people/1?_method=PUT
alias for PUT, to compensate for browser limitations
I think you need to separate data services from web UI. When providing data services, a RESTful system is entirely appropriate, including the use of verbs that browsers can't support (like PUT and DELETE).
When describing a UI, I think most people confuse "RESTful" with "nice, predictable URLs". I wouldn't be all that worried about a purely RESTful URL syntax when you're describing web UI.
If you're submitting the data via plain HTML, you're restricted to doing a POST based form. The URI that the POST request is sent to should not be the URI for the resource being modified. You should either POST to a collection resource that ADDs a newly created resource each time (with the URI for the new resource in the Location header and a 202 status code) or POST to an updater resource that updates a resource with a supplied URI in the request's content (or custom header).
If you're using an XmlHttpRequest object, you can set the method to PUT and submit the data to the resource's URI. This can also work with empty forms if the server supplies a valid URI for the yet-nonexistent resource. The first PUT would create the resource (returning 202). Subsequent PUTs will either do nothing if it's the same data or modify the existing resource (in either case a 200 is returned unless an error occurs).
The load should just be a normal GET request, and the saving of new data should be a POST to the URL which currently has the data...
For example, load the current data from http://www.example.com/record/matt-s-example and then, change the data, and POST back to the same URL with the new data.
A PUT request could be used when creating a new record (i.e. PUT the data at a URL which doesn't currently exist), but in practice just POSTing is probably a better approach to get started with.