Does the Wikipedia API have some endpoint or parameter to return only the wikitext of a page or a section of a page in the HTTP response body (i.e. without the JSON around it?) In this case it could use HTTP status codes to signal an error. The point would be to simplify parsing (no JSON).
Not technically part of the API but it's possible:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite?action=raw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite?action=raw§ion=0
Related
enter image description here
What this picture actually describes?
I have a confusion, which is, whenever we are sending a GET request to the server via a API,
are we sending it in JSON format ?Or, in HTML or any simple Text format?
On the other hand, whenever the API is sending a request (HTTP verb actually) to the server, is it using HTTP format? and the server also returns a response in HTTP format or in JSON format?
I know this question is very silly....but I am very new in API world.
The picture is not accurate, the server sends a response and the MIME type does not matter, it can be even RDF n-triples or images depending on the type of the service and what it supports. The protocol is always HTTP, though theoretically it is possible to use a different protocol. REST has some mandatory constraints, you can read about them in the Fielding dissertation or I wrote about them here and here.
Background:
Looking at some links like these below, I noticed two unique sets of descriptions for GET versus POST.
One description states that the difference is in how the information is sent: GET sends that information through the URL whereas POST sends that information through the HTTP request body.
Another description states that the difference is in which way that
information is sent: GET sends information to the server whereas POST
requests information from the server.
I find these descriptions to be lacking for the following reasons:
What if I want to get something from the server (GET) but I am sending a large amount of data first (eg. 50MB of text) so I would need to send it in the HTTP request body (POST). Would it be OK to use POST to get something from the server?
What if I don't want sensitive information to be stored in the URL, is it OK to instead use POST everytime?
The jquery GET function has the same method signature as the jquery POST function (see documentation), specifically it can also send data as A plain object or string that is sent to the server with the request, which I interpret as being added to the HTTP request body. If data for GET can be sent via the HTTP request body, then to me, this contradicts most of these sites that claim that as one of the differentiating descriptions of POST vs GET.
Nothing's to stop me from creating API endpoints which are GET but behave like POST (or PUT, or DELETE or PATCH)
Question:
Is the lack of strict descriptions because of my poor understanding, because of the ad hoc development process for HTTP/Ajax or is it something else entirely?
Supporting Links:
HTTP Request Methods
GET vs. POST
GET vs POST: Key Difference between HTTP Methods
jQuery - AJAX get() and post() Methods
I have followed the guide here to create a postman mock for a postman collection. The mock seem to be successfully created, but I have no idea how to use the mock service.
I've been given a url for the mock, but how do I specify one of my requests? If I issue a GET request to https://{{mockid}}.mock.pstmn.io I get the following response:
{
"error": {
"name": "mockRequestNotFoundError",
"message": "We were unable to find any matching requests for the mock path (i.e. undefined) in your collection."
}
}
According to the same guide mentioned above the following url to "run the mock" https://{{mockId}}.mock.pstmn.io/{{mockPath}} but what exactly is mockPath?
Within my collection I have plenty of folders, and inside one of these folders I have a request with an example response. How do I access this example response through the mock? Thanks for all help in advance!
Here's the Postman Pro API, which doesnt mention a lot more than just creating reading mocks.
I had the same issue seeing an irrelevant error but finally I found the solution. Unfortunately I cannot find a reference in Postman website. But here is my solution:
When you create a Mock server you define your first request (like GET api/v1/about). So the Mock server will be created but even when you obtain your API key and put it in the header of request (as x-api-key) it still returns an error. It doesn't make sense but it turned out that defining the request is not enough. For me it only started returning a response when I added an Example for the request.
So I suggest for each request that you create, also create at least one example. The request you send will be matched with the examples you have created and the matched response will be returned. You can define body, headers and the HTTP status code of the example response..
I have no Pro Postman subscription and it worked for me using my free subscription.
Menu for adding an example or selecting one of them for editing:
UI for defining the example (See body, headers and status) :
How to go back to the request page:
Here is the correct reply I get based on my example:
If you request in the example is a GET on api.domain.com/api/foo then the mockPath is /api/foo and your mock endpoint is a GET call to https://{{mockid}}.mock.pstmn.io/api/foo.
The HTTP request methods and the the pathname as shown in the image below constitute a mock.
For ease of use the mock server is designed to be used on top of collections. The request in the examples is used as is along with response attached to it. The name of the folder or collection is not a part of the pathname and is not factored in anywhere when using a mock. Mocking a collection means mocking all the examples in within your collection. An example is a tuple of request and response.
An optional response status code if specified lets you fetch the appropriate response for the same path. This can be specified with the x-mock-response-code header. So passing x-mock-response-code as 404 will return the example that matches the pathname and has a response with status code of 404.
Currently if there are examples with the same path but different domains, and mock is unable to distinguish between them it will deterministically return the first one.
Also if you have several examples for the same query :
Mock request accept another optional header, x-mock-response-code, which specifies which integer response code your returned response should match. For example, 500 will return only a 500 response. If this header is not provided, the closest match of any response code will be returned.
Optional headers like x-mock-response-name or x-mock-response-id allow you to further specify the exact response you want by the name or by the uid of the saved example respectively.
Here's the documentation for more details.
{{mockPath}} is simply the path for your request. You should start by adding an example for any of your requests.
Example:
Request: https://www.google.com/path/to/my/api
After adding your mock server, you can access your examples at:
https://{{mockId}}.mock.pstmn.io/path/to/my/api
I try to get all feedback (CommentType [positive,neutral,negative], user who left, date, message) for the particular user in xml format. For this I use http request:
https://api.ebay.com/wsapi?callname=GetFeedback&UserID=pashtetgp1988&siteid=0&DetailLevel=ReturnAll&appid=eBayAPID-73f4-45f2-b9a3-c8f6388b38d8&version=511
However, xml output returns error
Input data for tag <GetFeedback> is invalid or missing. Please check API documentation.
Another request with the same appid works fine:
http://open.api.ebay.com/shopping?callname=GetUserProfile&version=537&siteid=0&appid=eBayAPID-73f4-45f2-b9a3-c8f6388b38d8&UserID=pashtetgp1988&IncludeSelector=Details,FeedbackHistory&responseencoding=XML
What can be the problem?
GetFeedback is from of the eBay Trading API Service and you cannot make calls to this service using HTTP GET. The service only supports requests made by HTTP POST. Information required by GetFeedback is passed either through the HTTP headers or the body. The body of the request can be XML or SOAP. More information is available in the eBay documentation.
For future reference you should never expose your appid in code examples.
i've been researching/creating a REST api, in the backbone.js to php context.
i understand the concept of HTTP verbs and when they should be used
GET - select
POST - create
PUT - update
DELETE - delete
i also understand the concept of passing an identifier as a semantic url, e.g.
GET http://api/users/123
DELETE http://api/users/123
in these cases the "123" is the id the business logic will use to get/delete a user.
but what about the POST and PUT contexts? when sending a request to
PUT http://api/users/123
the api will update user id 123 with the supplied parameters, here's where my question arises.
i would assume the input parameters to update with would be sent as PUT parameters. in php syntax this is represented as: file_get_contents('php://input') (this is the same for delete requests.)
when testing this via backbone.js it works perfectly.
but when i try and create a new element with
POST http://api/users/
i would assume the input values would sent as POST parameters/ in php syntax this is represented as $_POST. but this does not work.
after some testing, and reading up on rails style REST apis (which is what the backbone docs suggest), i realized that all request variables are sent the same way. if i change my code to use file_get_contents('php://input') to get the request parameters for every request type, backbone works perfectly.
is this standard fair for REST apis? or just "rails flavored" ones?
PUT, POST, PATCH, etc (everything but GET and DELETE*) accept request bodies. Generally data is passed as either:
A URL encoded string of name/value pairs (exactly the same as a URL querystring) that is decoded and parsed by the server into $_POST (or similar depending on your web framework of choice). This typically relies on the presence of a Content-Type header set to application/x-www-form-urlencoded (browsers do this by default when forms are submitted). If you see the data in file_get_contents('php://input') but not $_POST it's very likely this header is not present or is set to another value. If you're using Chrome, you can see what headers and body the client is sending in the Network tab of the dev tools.
The other popular request body format is to use Content-Type: application/json and then write out a JSON string to the body. This can be accessed via file_get_contents('php://input') and then parsed with a JSON parser.
* Note on DELETE: it's a little unclear whether or not using a request body with DELETE is allowed or a good practice.