Problems understanding the URL implementation of a REST Proxy in ExtJS 4 - rest

I am a newbie with ExtJS 4. I am having problems understanding the implmentation for the "/" syntax for the URL in a Rest Proxy.
For example when using a REST type Proxy the URL config in many examples is just "/users".
I'm confused by this and can't seem to understand it's implmentation. I'm expecting to see an actual executable ".php" or such URL which I have used successfully in an Ajax Proxy. In other examples I see "app.php/users". I understand the php file which I expect but the "/users" part I don't understand. I've spent a few hours trying to find the answer for this but nothing I found has defined it for me.
I'm sure the explanation is very simple.
Thank You in Advance.

For the full explanation you should study up on REST.
Something like /users is standard usage for a REST HTTP request, it is not just ExtJS implementation. Specifically to answer your question, the reason no file extension is included is to denote that this is a logical url, i.e. there is not a physical users.xml file necessarily, instead it is dynamically generated using RESTful webservices.
In other words, you would need to set-up a RESTful webservice architecture to use this ExtJS proxy configuration.
The link above and this tutorial on implementing RESTful webservices with Java helped me alot.
EDIT:
I found a better tutorial (I think) here, also showing implementations in something other than Java.

Related

How to start with writing a RESTful service?

I am trying to create a RESTful web service that accepts JSON arguments and gives out a JSON response.
What I want is to accept HTTP requests made to my URL endpoint.
Something like,
POST /the/endpoint HTTP/1.1
Host: mywebsite.com
{"name":"yourname", "department":"your_department"}
Do a DB read at the backend and give relevant parameters like, say Manager name, salary etc as a JSON object, as the response.
What's the best way to go about it? I was thinking of using Java servlets for this? Is there a better way?
PS - I am just getting started so detailed answers or links to tutorials as to how to implement it would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
Yes you can easily do this with Servlets and some Json Libs for Marshalling /unmarshalling the Json Object to Java Object.
You can make use of Json libs like
Jackson ,
Gson etc
But you must know that REST application doesnt end with just handling the request and response , but it needs to take care of other non-functional requirements like
Authentication
Authorization
Security etc
Building this from a scratch from a Servlet is overkill and waste of time when there are ready made frameworks that these things for you
My favorite is Spring MVC 3.0
Check their project site for more details
Just to show you how easy to set up one in Spring MVC , check this below tutorial
Spring 3 REST Tutorial
Pls rate the post if it helps , Cheers.
If you want to go with Java, I suggest that you take a look at JAX-RS... And since REST is a complex topic, here is a url with tons of informations on it. http://code.google.com/p/implementing-rest/
As a complete beginner, I believe the best way to implement a (nearly) RESTful API without having to read a lot is simply to implement the API just using HTML pages and HTML forms with the back-end processing to handle them.
The rules are:
Use <a> tags to provide links to related resources. (navigation)
Use <form> tags to initiate any kind of processing operation on the server. (actions)
You can then make it properly RESTful by using progressive enhancement to add Javascript AJAX requests that perform PUT, PATCH, and DELETE instead of using POST for those three (of course, keeping POST for creating resources where the client doesn't know the resultant URI).
You can then click around and test the API in a web browser! Tools like Selenium can automate this.
If you need to provide JSON, this can be added after the API has been designed and tested, although libraries exist to process HTML or XHTML responses too, so JSON isn't necessarily required for machine readability.
if you are using php with symfony try:https://github.com/FriendsOfSymfony/FOSRestBundle this lets you create a real REST full servicer very quick.
Vogella made my day very easy when i started Web services with an super example here with eclipse screen shots ..Have a look here.

How to consume ASPX webservices in iOS?

Could anybody clarify the process of consuming aspx webservices in iOS? I have already tried JSON framework but now, need to create an app that consumes .net webservices in XML format. I need both to post some data to, and get data from the server. I already read about existing XML parsers for iOS that I found (here)
The question is do I need to do additional setup, like wrapping my query strings in SOAP or smth, in order to communicate with webserver? Would it be sufficient to use only one of mentioned libraries in the link or do I need additional stuff?
UPDATE: I found one tutorial on web (here) that demonstrates how to consume web services using Json-framework. Also, I found another one that demonstrates it using NSXMLParser (here). I'm not not very familiar with WSDL and SOAP, so any detailed explanation on how to implement would be desirable :). In both of these examples you just have to construct a request string in xml format and execute it, and that's it. Both examples actually bypasses the heavyness of SOAP and WSDL, so I was wondering do I have to know and do more that just construct a request string, execute it and get response?
While wsdl2objc is out there (as noted by #Girish Kolari), the truth is that there's no easy answer. I've never successfully gotten wsdl2objc working well for something that I couldn't have done more easily by hand. You will need to learn SOAP and WSDL. That's just a fact of life if you can't get access to a REST interface. In my experience, your best bet for simple SOAP access is to do it by hand, and your best bet for somewhat complicated SOAP access is gSOAP. Your best bet for very complicated access is to redesign something so it's not so complicated, ideally in REST. SOAP is a giant pain that some languages (C#) shield you from. ObjC does not shield you from it, so it continues to be a giant pain.
Yes, SOAP leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Converting SOAP to REST?

I have a web app, that also has an iPhone and Android app using the same API. It hasn't yet been made publicly available, so I wanted to look to convert from SOAP to REST.
I was only able to find a few tutorials that go into thorough explanations of how to code a REST web service, and of those I only found the MSDN one useful. The problem is I got really confused when they started using URI data types inside the object.
My question is, if you are converting SOAP to REST, do you have to recreate all the objects to add the URI? Am I not able to just have a REST entry point, then call one of the classes that retrieve the data?
Once the REST service is made it will only be used by my mobile apps, but not the website (since that can directly access the classes), which makes me not want to change the objects to add a URI. Is that a correct assumption to make, or should the web services also be called by the website?
Sorry if these are newbie questions, but I am struggling to get my head around REST, and I haven't had much experience creating the architecture of potentially high user base apps.
If anyone is able to point me to an actual code set, that would be helpful.
Edit: I am using VS2010, coding in C# and .Net 4.
Thanks a lot,
Andy
Im doing a very similar thing right now :). Rest via wcf isnt too hard, you do have to sometimes add your endpoints in the web config and give it the [webget]/[webinvoce] attributes in the refrence.cs of the web refrence when consuming though c# which is annoying.
Here is a code set i used when getting started. There are a few more on code project too.

How can I create a SOAP server in Perl?

I'm working with a third-party vendor who unfortunately requires that we set up a SOAP server to handle requests from them. I'm having some trouble finding the best way to go about this. One limitation I'm imposing is that it runs as a mod_perl2 handler. After some searching I've found that the best way may be to use XML::Compile and its SOAP classes but I'm having a tough time wrapping my head around it. Part of the problem is my limited understanding of SOAP and the documentation for most modules seems a bit cryptic to me.
So, can anyone give me some pointers, sample code, anything?
EDIT: we were also given a WSDL file to use, and this was not compatible with SOAP::WSDL ("unsupported global type found in ...
Looks like a rpc/literal WSDL, which is not supported by SOAP::WSDL)
EDIT: XML::Compile::SOAP complains "RPC encoded not supported by this version" when using the WSDL with XML::Compile::WSDL11. Can/should I not worry about the WSDL file?
If you have a limited understanding of SOAP, starting reading about SOAP before you worry about implementing it. There are lots of SOAP tutorials out there. Most of the documentation probably seems cryptic to you because you don't already know SOAP.
It's not that tricky of a process. It's not that different than any other web programming when it comes to the big steps:
You get a SOAP request, which is some XML.
You pull apart the XML to figure out what to do.
You put together some XML to send as a response.
You return the response.
XML::Compile will take care of most of the details for you.
Before you start writing your own server, you might consider writing a client for an existing SOAP server just to give yourself some practice.
I found two modules that can help you make soap server, but I never use its
https://metacpan.org/pod/XML::Compile::SOAP::Daemon
https://metacpan.org/pod/SOAP::WSDL::Server

Grails REST XML API definition

Striving to ship a well documented application, I'm looking for a good way to describe a REST API for my Grails Application users.
I know that REST calls should be simple enough to be described by examples, but it doesn't feel formal enough.
I've spent a couple of hours looking for a solution suggested by other Grails users, but didn't find a neat solution besides a recommendation to use WADL or WSDL 2.0
This looks like a good direction, but there must be a simple way to do it in Grails.
I'd appreciate some guidance for a process to generate a REST API based on my model objects preferably with the ability to filter or control the exposed fields, plus, a nice graphical way to present it (something like the XSD Eclipse plugin)
Thanks!
Guy
I would suggest to avoid WADL or WSDL for API documentation, you can see this question where I explained my reasons: Why the slow WADL uptake.
WADL or WSDL are usually used for automatic client code generation, they are not human readable documentation. I don't think WADL or WSDL are very useful for a user to figure out how to consume the resources correctly.
I prefer the good old html documentation, for example I like the way twitter documented their API
If you insist on automatic generation of resources documentation I can recommend on the ATOM service document. Many REST framework can generate it automatically based on the resources annotations. (e.g. Apache Wink)