I having been trying to find the difference between HTTP API and REST API resource types but not getting the clear difference. When and how should one use HTTP API ? A use case would be really appreciated.
A "REST API" (Representational state transfer) is an API that follows a certain architectural style, based on HTTP verbs (get, post, etc.). A REST API is always HTTP based.
An "HTTP API" simply only says that the HTTP protocol is used. A HTTP API doesn't necessarily have to be a REST API if it doesn't follow REST architectural styles.
You could say that a HTTP API could be any interface that you connect to over HTTP whereas REST API is only a subset of that group, that adheres to stricter rules.
In Exchange (not necessarily in Design Center), the REST APIs refer to APIs that are defined (using RAML or OAS) and implemented with MuleSoft tools (AnypointStudio) and published to Exchange, where as HTTP APIs refers to RESTful APIs that are created using other 3rd party tools whose HTTP/S URLs can be registered as assets within Exchange. HTTP APIs can also refer to a temporary placeholder created by a private Exchange user for future management of that endpoint (via API Manager).
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In few blogs I have read, it is said that a Webhook is a reverse API, where it is the sender who initiates the HTTP call while a receiver receiving the data.
It's also said that a Webhook is Event driven and not Request driven. What does that mean? Is a Webhook just a fancy name for a POST API call?
Moreover, I have known that in technologies like Mulesoft, there can be APIs which work as either a REST http exposed endpoint or an Internal Scheduler trigger. How does that relate with the API vs Webhook definition?
Please answer with respect to Middleware integration patterns rather than being programming language specific.
Can someone please explain how rest assured works internally on performing the API testing. I am just aware that it uses Groovy under the hood. Basically, I would like to understand the architecture of Rest Assured in detail. Thanks
The only thing I can tell you for sure - as well as all REST-clients, it uses cURL for request sending.
Rest Assured is a Java library that provides a convenient and easy-to-use API for testing RESTful web services. It's built on top of other popular Java libraries like Apache HTTP Client, Hamcrest, and JSONPath.
Here's a high-level overview of the architecture of Rest Assured:
Request Configuration: In this stage, you can specify the details of the request, such as the HTTP method, endpoint URL, request parameters, headers, and request body.
Request Execution: In this stage, Rest Assured sends the configured request to the server and retrieves the response.
Response Validation: In this stage, Rest Assured provides various methods to validate the response, such as checking the HTTP status code, response headers, and response body.
Result Extraction: In this stage, Rest Assured allows you to extract specific values from the response body and store them in variables for further use.
Overall, Rest Assured provides a simple and straightforward API for testing RESTful web services, making it easier for developers to write and maintain test cases. By abstracting away the underlying complexities of HTTP requests and responses, it enables you to focus on testing the business logic of your application.
I am experimenting with Mule API management these days. What I come to know is we can deploy our API to one of these:
A Mule Runtime
An API Gateway
In the documentation, it is said that we should go with option 1 when we want to separate out the implementation of your API from the orchestration. What does it mean?
Can any one please explain in detail?
Policy management from API Platform and analytics generation can be achieved only by using a correctly configured API Gateway, which is a superset of Mule EE (current version is API Gateway 2.1.0 which contains Mule EE 3.7.2).
Depending on your architecture you may have different solutions.
For example:
Proxy running on API Gateway, implementation API running somewhere
else (eg. Mule EE/CE, Tomcat, cobol server, etc)
Proxy and implementation API running on the same API Gateway
Implementation API
managed directly from API Platform without using the autogenerated
proxies.
HTH :-)
Not exactly sure what they mean there, because on this page: https://developer.mulesoft.com/docs/display/current/API+Gateway they also mention this:
Note that the API Gateway, because it acts as an orchestration layer
for services and APIs implemented elsewhere, is technology-agnostic.
You can proxy non-Mule services or APIs of any kind, as long as they
expose HTTP/HTTPS, VM, Jetty, or APIkit Router endpoints. You can also
proxy APIs that you design and build with API Designer and APIkit to
the API Gateway to separate the orchestration from the implementation
of those APIs.
So both methods technically allow you to separate API from orchestration, as your API gateway application could simply proxy another Mule application elsewhere that performs the orchestration. But my understanding of the two options are:
The API gateway is a limited offering that allows you to use a subset of Mule's connectors, transports and modules such as ApiKit and HTTP, it allows you to expose and API then use http to connect to whatever backend systems you want as a proxy and perform the orchestration in the API layer.
By using the Mule runtime operation, it gives you much more flexibility and allows you to compose as many applications as you want using the full range of connectors etc. and separate out the different aspects of your applications into as many layers as you want as separately deployable entities that you can deploy to on-premise standalone instances or Cloudhub etc.
#Ryan answer is more or less on the mark, however if you do choose the Mule ESB offering you will loose out on the API Management and governance functionality that API gateway provides OOTB.
These include
Lets you enforce runtime policies and collect data for analytics
Applies policies to APIs or endpoints around security, throttling,
rate limiting, and more
Extends PingFederate to serve as identity management and OAuth
provider for your APIs
Lets you require or restrict certain behaviors in a few simple steps
Lets you add or remove policies at runtime with no API downtime
Manages access to your API by issuing contract keys
Monitors the API to confirm it is meeting all contract terms
Ensures compliance with service level agreements (SLAs)
In my opinion go with API Gateway/Manager if your API will be consumed my third party developers with whom you might not have too many interactions (think public API's) else Mule ESB should be good.
You should be able to migrate from Mule ESB to API Manager (and vice versa) also easily if you need to, so I do not think you will get locked into your decision
PS: Content copied from here
I am working on one school project, And my task is to make a simple api gateway, which can placed between any of the 3rd party api and the end users, tha gateway can be used for defining usage limits of the api or to do some security analysis, I am totally new to this, I know the basic concept of API gateway, but don't know how do I implement it using JAVA.
Can anyone please give me some starting point where to start implementation of API gateway?
And what are the frameworks I should use and for what purpose?
Thanks,
Nixit Patel
In a nutshell, API gateway exposes public APIs, applies policies (authentication - typically via OAuth, throttling, adherence to the the defined API, caching, etc.) and then (if allowed) optionally applies transformation rules and forwards the call to the backend. Then, when the backend responds, gateway (after optionally applying transformation rules again) forwards the response to the original caller. Plus, there would typically be an API management solution around it providing subscriber portal, user management, analytics, etc.
So basically any web service framework would work as a quick DYI solution.
You can also use plugin model of an open-source load-balancer such as NGINX.
Or take an open-source API Gateway to learn from it - e.g. WSO2 API Manager (the easiest way to see it in action is the hosted version: WSO2 API Cloud)
I'm new to WCF RESTFull services developpment and I'm looking for some usefull information and your experience feedback about using webHttpBinding compared to the new WCF Web API http://wcf.codeplex.com/.
What I'm looking for is to know about the shortcomings of webHttpBinding and therefore why to use the new Web api and especially what problems the new API resolves.
If you could point me to some blog posts comparing both of them or just talking about the problems when using webHttpBinding I would appreciate. Thank you in advance.
Main shortcomings I would say is that the webhttpbinding makes it difficult to handle HTTP specific concerns. It works great if all you are doing is passing an object over HTTP that is serialized into XML or JSON and which may be transported over different formats.
HTTP is much more than a simple transport protocol for XML and JSON, it is an application layer protocol with rich semantics. Web API is specifically targetting folks that want to build systems over HTTP that fully levergage HTTP's richness.
Web API embraces that HTTP Resources can have a multitude of representations based on the needs of different clients. One end of the spectrum could be a dumb browser that just talks to a service using a Form url encoded post and a GET, while the other end could be a more rich client that uses Atom/OData or a hypermedia based media type.
Web API embraces that there are other HTTP specific concerns like conneg, etags, etc which allow better leveraging intermediary web servers.
Web API is designed with more testability in mind, thus you can address working with HTTP messages or other concerns in a more testable manner.
Web API has a more simplified configuration story.
You can read more about the rationale here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/endpoint/archive/2010/11/01/wcf-web-apis-http-your-way.aspx
The most significant difference for me is the change in programming model. You no longer write 'services' which expose 'operations' bound to HTTP idioms (GET, POST etc.). With Web APIs you create 'resources' (POCOs) with which your clients can interact.
Web APIs seem to be better at handling various custom media types (like PNG images for example).
Last but not least, Web APIs are far better suited for automated testing. For instance, you no longer have to use static context classes to access HTTP concepts such as response codes. You use POCO request and response classes which can be easily instantiated in automated tests using old-style new() operator.
I agree with Ladislav that Web APIs are just a preview now and building application on top of it can be both risky and forbidden by the means of license agreement (but I haven't checked that).
Have you considered #serialseb's OpenRasta? It is stable and offers very nice programming model for building RESTful services.
The Web API is something like possible future of REST development in WCF. It is just preview which can significantly change before final release (probably in next version of .NET framework). So if you want to build production REST service you should use webHttpBinding.
Available information about Web Api can be found for example on .NET Connected Framework team's blog and on the site you mentioned. It is simplification and extension of current REST API.
Web API provides a REST-friendly HTTP based API. Web API uses the patterns of MVC and is going to be very familiar to ASP.NET MVC developers. Web API can leverage the capabilities of HTTP as an application layer protocol, returning resources in multiple representations (XML, JSON, HTML etc.) according the the client's request headers.
On the other hand WCF webHttpBinding uses the patterns of WCF, and is going to appeal more to the WCF developer - ServiceContracts, OperationContracts, comprehensive (or overweight, depending how you look at it, config file), ability to self-host outside of IIS.
One of the things I like about Web API is the ability to use dynamic types to escape the constraints of the type system. I also like the default exception behavior in Web API - contrast WCF webHttpBinding where, by default, exceptions bubble up as HTTP 500 + an HTML payload (yuk!).
Its nice to have the choice between two excellent technologies here. I wouldn't describe Web API as 'newer' or 'better' that WCF, as this implies its a replacement technology and that WCF webHttpBinding is legacy, which I don't believe is true.
I chose to use WCF webHttpBinding recently to expose a JSON API for an existing WCF SOAP service. I believe it was a good choice because it fitted that style of that existing solution and minimized the amount of change required.