Using Web Connectors

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Using Web Connectors

The Web connector feature lets you access data from remote web services for display in the mobile application dashboard. Any web service with Basic, Digest, or no authentication and responses in XML, JSON, or ATOM format is supported, for example, CA APM Cloud Monitor.

The Web connector feature supports:

Authentication types: Basic, Digest, or none
Response formats: XML, JSON, ATOM
Metric and metadata request types
Parameters for filtering data from web services
The GET HTTP execution method
Variables to pass data from one request to another

About Metric and Metadata Requests

Request Type	What You Should Know
Metric	Exposes available metrics and is visible in the Metric tab. Use parameters to specify the data to collect from the web service. For example, you can use parameters to define time intervals (start and end).
Metadata	Executed on connector startup and every 12 hours by default. The default refresh interval can be modified by updating: http.connector.incrementalSync.reschedule FullSync.minutes in the file, INSTALL DIR/config/execConfig.properties Not visible in the Metric tab Output variables from executing this request can be used as inputs when configuring other requests.

Request Type

What You Should Know

Metric

Exposes available metrics and is visible in the Metric tab.
Use parameters to specify the data to collect from the web service. For example, you can use parameters to define time intervals (start and end).

Metadata

Executed on connector startup and every 12 hours by default. The default refresh interval can be modified by updating:
http.connector.incrementalSync.reschedule FullSync.minutes in the file, INSTALL DIR/config/execConfig.properties

Not visible in the Metric tab
Output variables from executing this request can be used as inputs when configuring other requests.

About Variables

A common example of using variables is where one web service call is an authentication request that returns a “sessionId,” and a second web service call uses this “sessionId” as one of the inputs to get metric data. In this case, you must configure the first request as type “metadata” (which produces the variable sessionId), and the second is a “metric” request that consumes this variable as ${sessionId} to get the metric data.

Other notes:

Variables are consumed in requests by specifying the variable name within ${}, for example, ${varname}
If your request requires a time interval, use the named variables: $startTime{time format} and $endTime{time format}, where the time format is specified as a Java time format.
Use curly brackets {} to specify a variable value for direct substitution. For example, to display stock quote, create a variable, Key = STOCK and Value = {CA}