RESTful using Jersey: method to POST multiple entities - rest

I am trying to develop a method in my RESTful web service in Java to insert multiple entries into a MySQL DB using POST request. The generated RESTful Web Service has a method to insert a single entity, but not multiple ones. For example, it accepts:
<creature>
<sort>Mouse</sort>
<name>Pinky</name>
</creature>
But not (what I would like):
<creature>
<sort>Mouse</sort>
<name>Pinky</name>
</creature>
<creature>
<sort>Elephant</sort>
<name>Dumbo</name>
</creature>
I'm guessing that you have to loop through the entities, but not sure how to implement it, being a shameful novice.

Just ran into this myself. I need transactional posts of multiple items, so iterating on the client is out of the question. The consensus seems to be that you need to use a separate path from your normal resources:
http://chasenlehara.com/blog/creating-restful-web-services/ (Multi-resources)
RESTful way to create multiple items in one request
I couldn't find much about how to do this with Jersey, though. As it turns out, it's pretty easy. You should already have multi-entity converter and resource classes for GET requests, you just need to specify a path where the server can assume it's going to receive them:
#Path("creatures")
#Stateless
public class CreaturesResource {
...
#POST
#Consumes({"application/xml", "application/json"})
public Response post(CreatureConverter data) {
Creature entity = data.resolveEntity(em);
postCreature(entity);
}
#POST #Path("multi")
#Consumes({"application/xml", "application/json"})
public Response postMulti(CreaturesConverter data) {
Collection<Creature> entities = data.getEntities();
for (Creature c : entities) {
postCreature(c);
}
}
Then instead of posting
<creature />
to
http://.../resources/creatures
You would post
<creatures>
<creature />
<creature />
</creatures>
to
http://.../resources/creatures/multi

Related

Controller return type and httpStatus best practice and production/consumption on method in REST WS

I commence in REST and I have some questions:
What type must the controller return? Typically, I'm asking if my Rest #Controller must return Item object as it is or encapsulate it in ResponseEntity in order to specify http-status-code.
What http status code to use in a GET method on a particular item ("/items/2") if the given item does not exists: HttpMediaStatus.OK(200) and null return or HttpStatus.NO_CONTENT(204) and null return ?
Second part: I saw it was possible to specify #Produces and #Consumes on WS method but what the use of that? My application and my methods work so, why specify MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE? Doesn't Spring/SpringBoot automatically convert Item or ResponseEntity into json?
Context: using Spring Boot, hibernate, REST webservice.
Thank you.
Many questions in one, I'll provide short answers with a bunch of link to relevant articles and the reference documentation.
What type must the controller return?
Depends on your annotation and the RESTful-ness of your service. There are three annotations you can use for controllers: #Controller, #RestController and #RepositoryRestController.
Controller is the base annotation to mark your class as a controller. The return type of the controller endpoint methods can be many things, I invite you to read this dedicated post to get a grasp of it.
When developing a pure-REST service, you will focus on using RestController and RepositoryRestController.
RestControlleris Controller + ResponseBody. It binds the return value of the endpoint method to the web response body:
#RestController
public ItemController {
#RequestMapping("/items/{id}")
public Item getItem(#PathVariable("id") String id) {
Item item = ...
return item;
}
}
With this, when you hit http:/.../api/items/foo, Spring does its magic, automatically converting the item to a ResponseEntity with a relevant 40X status code and some default HTTP headers.
At some point, you will need more control over the status code and headers, while still benefiting from Spring Data REST's settings. That's when you will use RepositoryRestController with a ResponseEntity<Item> as return type, see the example the Spring Data REST reference.
What http status code to use in a GET method on a particular item if the given item does not exists?
Bluntly said: use HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND. You're looking for a resource that does not exist, there's something wrong.
That being said, it is completely up to you to decide how to handle missing resources in your project. If your workflow justifies it, a missing resource could be something completely acceptable that indeed returns a 20X response, though you may expect users of your API to get confused if you haven't warned them or provided some documentation (we are creatures of habits and conventions). But I'd still start with a 404 status code.
(...) #Produces and #Consumes on WS method but what the use of that? My application and my methods work so, why specify MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE? Doesn't Spring/SpringBoot automatically convert Item or ResponseEntity into json?
#Consumes and #Produces are respectively matched against content-type and accept headers from the request. It's a mean of restricting the input accepted and the output provided by your endpoint method.
Since we're talking about a REST service, communications between clients of the API and the service are expected to be JSON-formatted. Thanks to Spring HATEOAS, the answer are actually formatted with the application/hal+json content-type.
In that scenario, you can indeed not bother with those two annotations. You will need them if you develop a service that accepts different content-types (application/text, application/json, application/xml...) and provides, for instance, HTML views to users of your website and JSON or XML response to automated clients of your service.
For real life examples:
Facebook provides the Graph API for applications to read to/write from its graph, while users happily (?) surf on web pages
Google does the same with the Google Maps API

Using Postman to test REST persistence endpoints

I have been trying to build a secured REST endpoint to save (and return) a person object. So far I have a method as below:
#RequestMapping(value = "/save/", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public Person save(#RequestBody Person person) {
return repository.save(person);
}
I have been trying to use Postman to test this endpoint, but don't seem to be able to structure the URL in the correct way. I should say that I have successfully tested find(Long id) (/find/{id}) and findall.
http://localhost:8080/api/save?person={"id":2,"first":"Brian","last":"Smith"}
First, is this the correct way to structure an endpoint for saving an object, and is the Postman structure correct?
Your method is POST. So you should pass on your payload like this.
Also make sure that you have mentioned your web application context root. If api is your context root, then you are correct. But if it is the case then change it to some meaningful name.

create a Jax-RS RESTful service that accepts both POST and GET?

I'm converting one of my existing service to become RESTful and I've got the basic things working with RestEasy. Some of my client apps should be able to execute both GET and POST requests to several services. I'm just seeking if there is any easy way around jax-rs to specify that API should accept both GETs and POSTs. Following you can find a test method, let me know if you see any way around without duplicating this in another class with #GET and #QueryParam.
#POST
#Path("/add")
public Response testREST(#FormParam("paraA") String paraA,
#FormParam("paraB") int paraB) {
return Response.status(200)
.entity("Test my input : " + paraA + ", age : " + paraB)
.build();
}
Just put your method body in another method and declare a public method for each HTTP verb:
#Controller
#Path("/foo-controller")
public class MyController {
#GET
#Path("/thing")
public Response getStuff() {
return doStuff();
}
#POST
#Path("/thing")
public Response postStuff() {
return doStuff();
}
private Response doStuff() {
// Do the stuff...
return Response.status(200)
.entity("Done")
.build();
}
}
As wikipedia says, an API is RESTful if it is a collection of resources with four defined aspects:
the base URI for the web service, such as http://example.com/resources/
the Internet media type of the data supported by the web service. This is often XML but can be any other valid Internet media type providing that it is a valid hypertext standard.
the set of operations supported by the web service using HTTP methods (e.g., GET, PUT, POST, or DELETE).
The API must be hypertext driven.
By diminishing the difference between GET and POST you're violating the third aspect.
If this scenario fits for all your resources you could create a ServletFilter which wraps the request and will return Get or Post everytime the method will be requested.

Creating a REST service in Sitecore

I'm trying to build a REST service in a Sitecore root. My application start looks like this:
void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "DefaultApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}", defaults: new { id = System.Web.Http.RouteParameter.Optional });
}
And my URL looks like this:
http://{mydomain}/api/books
I have the correct controller and all that.
But Sitecore keeps redirecting me to the 404 page. I've added the path to the IgnoreUrlPrefixes node in the web.config, but to no avail. If I had to guess, I'd think that Sitecore's handler is redirecting before my code gets the chance to execute, but I really don't know.
Does anybody have any idea what might be wrong?
Your assessment is correct. You need a processor in the httpRequestBegin pipeline to abort Sitecore's processing. See the SystemWebRoutingResolver in this answer:
Sitecore and ASP.net MVC
It's also described in this article:
http://www.sitecore.net/Community/Technical-Blogs/John-West-Sitecore-Blog/Posts/2010/10/Sitecore-MVC-Crash-Course.aspx
But I'll include the code here as well. :)
public class SystemWebRoutingResolver : Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.HttpRequestProcessor
{
public override void Process(Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.HttpRequestArgs args)
{
RouteData routeData = RouteTable.Routes.GetRouteData(new HttpContextWrapper(args.Context));
if (routeData != null)
{
args.AbortPipeline();
}
}
}
Then in your httpRequestBegin configuration:
<processor type="My.SystemWebRoutingResolver, My.Classes" />
You might want to have a look at Sitecore Web Api
It's pretty much the same you are building.
Another option, which I've used to good effect, is to use the content tree, the "star" item, and a sublayout/layout combination dedicated to this purpose:
[siteroot]/API/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*
The above path allows you to have anywhere between 1 and 9 segments - if you need more than that, you probably need to rethink your process, IMO. This also retains all of the Sitecore context. Sitecore, when unable to find an item in a folder, attempts to look for the catch-all star item and if present, it renders that item instead of returning a 404.
There are a few ways to go about doing the restful methods and the sublayout (or sublayouts if you want to segregate them by depth to simplify parsing).
You can choose to follow the general "standard" and use GET, PUT, and POST calls to interact with these items, but then you can't use Sitecore Caching without custom backend caching code). Alternately, you can split your API into three different trees:
[siteroot]/API/GET/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*
[siteroot]/API/PUT/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*
[siteroot]/API/POST/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*
This allows caching the GET requests (since GET requests should only retrieve data, not update it). Be sure to use the proper caching scheme, essentially this should cache based on every permutation of the data, user, etc., if you intend to use this in any of those contexts.
If you are going to create multiple sublayouts, I recommend creating a base class that handles general methods for GET, PUT, and POST, and then use those classes as the base for your sublayouts.
In your sublayouts, you simply get the Request object, get the path (and query if you're using queries), split it, and perform your switch case logic just as you would with standard routing. For PUT, use Response.ReadBinary(). For POST use the Request.Form object to get all of the form elements and iterate through them to process the information provided (it may be easiest to put all of your form data into a single JSON object, encapsulated as a string (so .NET sees it as a string and therefore one single property) and then you only have one element in the post to deserialize depending on the POST path the user specified.
Complicated? Yes. Works? Yes. Recommended? Well... if you're in a shared environment (multiple sites) and you don't want this processing happening for EVERY site in the pipeline processor, then this solution works. If you have access to using MVC with Sitecore or have no issues altering the pipeline processor, then that is likely more efficient.
One benefit to the content based method is that the context lifecycle is exactly the same as a standard Sitecore page (logins, etc.), so you've got all the same controls as any other item would provide at that point in the lifecycle. The negative to this is that you have to deal with the entire page lifecycle load before it gets to your code... the pipeline processor can skip a lot of Sitecore's process and just get the data you need directly, making it faster.
you need to have a Pipeline initializer for Routing:
It will be like :
public class Initializer
{
public void Process(PipelineArgs args)
{
RouteCollection route = RouteTable.Routes;
route.MapHttpRoute("DefaultApi", "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { id = RouteParameter.Optional });
}
}
On config file you will have :
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
<sitecore>
<pipelines>
<initialize>
<processor type="_YourNameSpace.Initializer,_YourAssembly" />
</initialize>
</pipelines>
</sitecore>
</configuration>
Happy coding

adding http headers in call to SoapHttpClient service

I have to consume a service provided by one of our partners. I was given little direction, but was told the security was to be PasswordDigest. I looked it up and immediatly saw lots of references to WSE, so off I went. It was very easy to implement and in no time I had a standard WSE user token using PasswordDigest sitting in the SOAP headers of my messages.
When we started testing today I was immediatly told (by the error message) that things weren't right. Turns out, out partner doesn't look in the SOAP header, but rather wants the security info in the http header.
I have seen lots of articles on how to add custom http headers to a proxy class, but my proxy inherits from SoapHttpClientProtocol which doesn't have a headers collection to add to. I was looking at making a raw httpWebRequest, but I have a specific method to access that has some complex parameters to deal with (and besides it feels like going backwords).
What is the best way to add custom http headers to a service proxy class that doesn't have a GetWebRequest method?
For reference:
Proxy class decleration:
[System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("System.Web.Services", "2.0.50727.3053")]
[System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Web.Services.WebServiceBindingAttribute(Name="MtomServiceSoap11", namespace="http://ws.xxxxxxx.com/")]
public partial class MtomServiceService : System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol {
Target method I need to call:
[System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapDocumentMethodAttribute("", Use=System.Web.Services.Description.SoapBindingUse.Literal, ParameterStyle=System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapParameterStyle.Bare)]
[return: System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute("uploadDocumentResponse", Namespace="http://ws.edsmtom.citizensfla.com/")]
public uploadDocumentResponse uploadDocument([System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute(Namespace="http://ws.xxxxxxx.com/")] uploadDocumentRequest uploadDocumentRequest) {
object[] results = this.Invoke("uploadDocument", new object[] {
uploadDocumentRequest});
return ((uploadDocumentResponse)(results[0]));
}
}
The actual call to the Service is simple. The objects being pass in are not:
request.criteria = docCriteria;
request.document = document;
var result = service.uploadDocument(request);
Thanks.
It figures that 30 minutes after posting I would stumble across the answer. While the proxy class decelaration does not create a GetWebRequest method, its base class System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol has it and it can be overridden.
protected override System.Net.WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri uri)
{
var request = base.GetWebRequest(uri);
request.Headers.Add("blah", "blah"); // <----
return request;
}