RESTful Web Services

Using the RESTful Web Service plugin business logic can be exposed as a RESTful Web Service.

The RESTful Web Service plugin does not contain any client side functions or properties, it is a 100% server side operating plugin.

To create a RESTful Web Service, create a form in a solution and add the following methods to the form:

• ws_read() for the GET operation
• ws_create() for the POST operation
• ws_delete() for the DELETE operation
• ws_update() for the PUT operation
  In each method, add the required business logic.

The RESTful Web Service API is published on the Servoy Application Server through the url: <serverUrl>/servoy-service/rest_ws/solutionName/formName

A sample solution is included in the Servoy distribution (servoy_sample_rest_ws.servoy), detailing how to retrieve data from the http request and to return a response.

RESTful Web Services are to be stateless. As subsequent requests to the RESTful Web Service API might be handled by different headless clients in the pool of clients configured for the plugin, do not use any state in between calls to the API. This means at least the following:

• Do not use global or form variables
• Do not use the solution model API
• Do not alter the state of the a form's UI
• Do save or rollback any unsaved changes

For more information on RESTful Web Services, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer
http://www.infoq.com/articles/rest-introduction
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-restful/
http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/restws.pdf

{column:width=80px}{column}{column}{column}

{column:width=100%}{column}