Administration with Web Services › Basic Operations in REST Web Services

Basic Operations in REST Web Services

The REST specification leaves room for some flexibility. As a result, RESTful web services can use basic HTTP syntax to perform different tasks.

In this implementation, the basic REST commands are used as follows:

• GET - Log in or retrieve information from a server database. Only requires a browser session.
• POST - Create an object. Often requires XML input to supply parameters.
• PUT - Edit an existing object. Occasionally also used to create an object. Usually does not require XML input to supply parameters.
• DELETE - Delete an existing object.

Here is an example of a simple operation:

http://[server IP address]:8181/pc/center/webservice/tenants/
tenantName/{tenantName}/description/{NewDescription}

This operation is a PUT that updates the description parameter of a tenant.

You would substitute the desired values inside the braces { } for the required parameters:

{tenantName}

The name of the tenant that you want to edit.

{tenantDescription}

The new description to identify this tenant.

The method 'get id names' gets a list of supported ID names. For example, you would enter the following commands for the tenant web service:

http://[server IP address]:8181/pc/center/webservice/
tenants/idNames

The following list is returned:

[tenantAccountId, tenantItemId, tenantName]

Each request receives a reply consisting of an HTTP status code, which indicates the type of problem, and HTTP status response text to describe the problem. The following HTTP response code ranges are used for feedback:

• 200 - Command status is 'OK'.
• 400 - A user error has occurred. Errors in this range indicate a problem with the input text (400) or the user credentials (403) and can usually be easily corrected.
• 500 - An system error occurred. Errors in this range typically indicate a system fault. Such errors can require assistance from CA Technical Support to resolve them.

For more information about HTTP status codes, see the following IETF website:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt