When creating a site/script to be on the client end of a RESTful API, what tools are available to create a "workbench" to explore the API, examining headers and responses while working through the design? Preferably one(s) that allow you to enter a custom endpoint, and create sample requests to see the responses. I recall seeing one nice workbench before, but its name has escaped me.
Re-found the one I remembered: The Apigee Console is a great interface for playing around with an existing API or building your own.
Mashery's I/O Docs is an open source workbench that you can deploy yourself on a Node.js server with Redis for storage.
If you have the wadl file of the ReST Services, you can load it in SOAP UI and use it.
EditedAnother much simpler tool Rest Client
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I'm planing on creating an native .net app for Windows as well as a native OSX application with swift.
These two applications should be able to communicate with the same server. With that I mean writing and reading from the same SQL Database, and have REST communication with the server.
Now I'm struggling to come up with a solution for the backend. I'm looking into Serverless backends like Azure or Google Cloud, but I'm not sure that I can use these Services with both my applications. Both Azure and Google Cloud have SDKs for .Net but I've never found one for Swift or Objective-C.
Are there such Services that allow me to communicate or should I just develop my own?
Do you have any good solutions for my problem? Or what is the best server architecture to use for this kind of problem? Any inputs are appreciated!
If your servers vend a REST API, no vendor SDKs should be required. REST is platform- and vendor-agnostic. All you need is an HTTP client, which Swift/ObjC most definitely do have. I use a serverless (AWS Lambda) setup from Swift, and it's easy. Though, I have done this kind of thing before :)
What I would do is setup a simple test server, and expose an API endpoint. Make sure you can reach it with curl from your machine. Then, take a look at the NSURLSession APIs in Foundation. They'll help you make an HTTP request similar to what curl can do. From there, you'll need to investigate serialization (like JSON), which Swift can also do easily (as of Swift 4, I believe).
Good luck!
I am new to PowerApps development. I am trying to connect PowerApps to my custom APIs (Azure app api) and getting results of "resource not found". I can call the api from browsers, postman no problem. The .json file I use for PowerApps is the same as the one I use for editor.swagger.io (for testing). I checked the log file of the application on azure, all of the requests from browsers logged but not the ones from PowerApps. My question is, how PowerApps calls APIs and what is the right format of the .json file used for PowerApps app?
Thank you.
I would recommend trying again, we had a small issue on our backend that was causing some 404's at times. A fix for it has been deployed so you might see it work.
PowerApps uses Swagger to determine the shape of the REST api to be able to project those APIs into "formulas" that can be used easily in the client.
Also, for development/troubleshooting purposes I highly recommend using Fiddler to see exactly the REST call that PowerApps is doing and making sure the URL and parameters are correct. If not then look into your swagger definition and make sure there are no issues with the paths provided there.
You might also check that your Azure App API has either:
The PowerApps IP Addresses Whitelisted OR
If available, the "Allow Access to Azure Services" option toggled
When building Azure SQL backends for PowerApps, one of these paths must be followed.
This is really basic.I want to implement a RESTful web API.
Now I know you can write custom applications and scripts to integrate with the API.
What I need to know:
In what languages can you write this API? C#, Java, php?
When building/programming a program that implements this API, is this the client and the software that issued the API the server? (eg. Dropbox would be the server and the custom app that integrates with the Dropbox API is the Client?
Thank you.
A REST API can be built in any programming language that allows you to handle HTTP requests (or can be attached to a Web server as a handler for requests). The two methods I've been using:
Stand-alone Windows service implementing a REST service using WCF
WEB server Apache + PHP
You are correct about the terminology. A program consuming a service is called the client, a program providing a service is called the server (while actually in the PHP approach, Apache would be the server as it is taking the request and having the script handle it).
Additional nitpicking: JQuery is not a language, but a framework to help you use some JavaScript features more easily.
On your comment Recap:
Close :-) The Client transfers JSON/XML/whatever to a server using HTTP requests. The Client can be written in any language that can perform HTTP requests.
On the server side, there needs to be some application that handles the HTTP requests (service), also written in any language, as long as it "speaks" HTTP.
The API is the definition of which operations are possible, for example, adding user accounts, getting the current time, etc. (this is what you define - what do you want your service to do?).
The JSON/XML/whatever that you transfer is the workload, the parameters for the API call. For example, if you want to add a new user to your system, the workload could be the new user name, the real name, the eMail address and some other details about the user. If the API call returns the current server time, you might not need any parameters at all, but you get back JSON/XML/whatever from the service.
The actual call being made is determined by the URL you call. For example, the URL for adding a user could be http://localhost/myrestservice/adduser and you'd perform a POST request against that URL with the required workload. For the time example, the URL could be http://localhost/myrestservice/getservertime and you'd perform a GET request against that URL.
I suggest that you read about how REST services actually work before you start, as I see some question marks on your face ;-)
Short:
API = available operations (=> URLs)
Parameters to API calls = JSON/XML/Plain Text/whatever
Client = calls the service through HTTP
Service = handles the calls, replies to client in response to HTTP requests
If you are a php programmer and familiar with Codeigniter framework then go here : Working with RESTful Services in CodeIgniter.
visit also : Rest Tutorial
First of all, you should begin with learning what is a RESTful API.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer
http://www.restapitutorial.com/
http://rest.elkstein.org/
In what languages can you write this API? C#, Java, php, jQuery?
You can write an API in any language. What can help is the framework you'd be using. JQuery is not a language, but a framework for integrating Javascript application in every web browser, so it won't help.
I'd advice you to use a microframework to write your first RESTful API, because they usually are easy to use and help focus on the important (bottle/flask in python, express in javascript, silex in php, spark in java or nina in C#)
When building/programming a program that implements this API, is this the client and the software that issued the API the server? (eg. Dropbox would be the server and the custom app that integrates with the Dropbox API is the Client?
You're right, the server is providing you the service, hence the API. The client is user to that API, and implementing it into something useful.
As most of the people stated already, you can do this in just about any language.
Might I suggest that you look into NodeJS? If so, check out Restify: http://mcavage.github.io/node-restify/
There's a nice community behind NodeJS and I think it's quite open to newcomers. Just try not to pick up bad habits from JavaScript pitfalls. If you're new to programming, I'd suggest reading some intro book.
good luck!
If you have ever used the Flickr API, you'll be familiar with their API Explorer. It is an awesome tool, that allows you to view the documentation for each API method, and the killer feature, being the execution of that API method (with a form to populate any request parameters). It even picks up when you are logged in, and completes the authentication part on your behalf. Gowalla has a similar API Explorer that is also really good.
Are there are tools for WCF that will auto-generate such an API Explorer, free or commercial?
Currently, we use Fiddler to build the JSON requests, but I would like to publish these service contracts, and allow potential developers to play around with them via a web based API explorer.
I am aware of the WCF Web HTTP Service Help Page, which I am using (and is awesome), but it is the API Explorer part that I am interested in.
You may want to look at I/O Docs - an open-sourced interactive documentation system for RESTful web APIs that any API owner can use to deploy for their own documentation. It runs on Node.js and uses Redis as a data store.
https://github.com/mashery/iodocs
Example: developer.klout.com/iodocs, developer.rottentomatoes.com/iodocs
It uses JSON schema based files to define API endpoints, method and parameters. Based on these JSON files, it generates a client interface that developers can use to learn and explore your API. API calls can be executed directly from the documentation interface, producing formatted responses.
It's Open-sourced, so you can be assured of regular updates and improvements. In fact this past weekend, Brandon West from SendGrid (who use I/O docs to power their documentation), created and open sourced the UI to create/edit the JSON schema files for I/O Docs. So you don't have to manually create the JSON files anymore.
https://github.com/brandonmwest/iodoctor
Not exactly what you were looking for, but....
WCF provides something called the WCF Test Client, for this purpose.
If you install Visual Studio, you get it. For example, for VS2008, installed in the usual place, you can find the WCF Test Client (WcfTestClient.exe) in the following location:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\
Take a look at Apigee: http://apigee.com/
Is this possible? I'm about to start into a project which requires a call from an SAP instance to a remotely hosted service using XML over HTTPS. Does anyone have sample ABAP code?
There is a SDN article titled "Real Web Services with REST and ICF". This covers the server side (providing a REST service) only, but maybe this could help you getting started. There's also the (arguably rather concise) documentation on client side ICF development. However, it looks like you'll have to parse the body on your own, using nothing but the XML support SAP provides you with. That's the drawback of REST...
This can be done using cl_http_client.
Check the SAP help documentation for the code.
For making HTTPS calls, you also need to import the certificate of your service provider into the system. This can be done using the transaction "STRUST". This step is compulsory; without it, you`ll get communication errors.