Web Service API › Query String in URIs

Query String in URIs

URI can contain a query string. RFC 3986 titled “Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax” describes a query string as follows:

"The query component contains non-hierarchical data that, along with data in the path component (Section 3.3), serves to identify a resource within the scope of the URI's scheme and naming authority (if any). The query component is indicated by the first question mark ("?") character and terminated by a number sign ("#") character or by the end of the URI … query components are often used to carry identifying information in the form of "key=value" pairs."

The CA Automation Point URIs for which our web services accept a query string are documented in this chapter. CA follows the guidance of RFC 3986. You can often apply multiple query options when specifying a URI that accepts a query string. When specifying multiple query options, you separate each option from the previous option with an ampersand (&) character. This format is shown in the following example:

URI-path?option1=value1&option2=value2

When an unknown query option is specified, the operation returns an HTTP status error of 400 (Bad Request) and the operation returns a WSResult document. If an otherwise valid query option is specified, which is not applicable due to a conflict with another query option, the non-applicable option is ignored and the operation is processed. These conflicts are documented in this chapter.

Within some query strings, a pattern-matching expression can be used as the value of a query option. The pattern-matching expression format that CA Automation Point recognizes is:

The ‘\’ character serves as an escape character. The following escape sequences are recognized:

Any other escape sequence is treated as an error. For example, the string “AX\C” is an invalid pattern.