Grouper Developers Forum

[Scotty Logan <>]

On Jan 18, 2008, at 12:05 AM, Chris Hyzer wrote:
> Yeah, its not strictly restful, but it is loose-rest (i.e. http/xml  
> non-soap web services).

It's far from even being loose REST; REST is a bit more than "http/xml  
non-soap web services".

> I updated the docs with examples, readme, xml input output for 4  
> cases: addMember SOAP, addMember Rest, addMemberSimple SOAP,  
> addMemberSimple REST:
>
> https://wiki.internet2.edu/confluence/display/GrouperWG/Add+Member

This is the request that's passed to the "REST" endpoint:

<ns1:addMember xmlns:ns1="http://webservices.grouper.middleware.internet2.edu/xsd 
">
        <ns1:wsGroupLookup>
                <ns1:groupName>aStem:aGroup</ns1:groupName>
        </ns1:wsGroupLookup>
        <ns1:subjectLookups>
                <ns1:subjectId>10021368</ns1:subjectId>
        </ns1:subjectLookups>
        <ns1:subjectLookups>
                <ns1:subjectId>10039438</ns1:subjectId>
        </ns1:subjectLookups>
        <ns1:replaceAllExisting>F</ns1:replaceAllExisting>
        <ns1:actAsSubjectLookup>
                <ns1:subjectId>GrouperSystem</ns1:subjectId>
        </ns1:actAsSubjectLookup>
</ns1:addMember>

Which looks more like a set of nested function calls than a  
representation of a group.

Please take a look at the notes from the UW meeting - Jim Fox posted  
this link earlier:

https://wiki.cac.washington.edu/display/groups/UW+Groups+Web+Service+Design+Workshop

That's what a RESTful interface to Grouper should look like.

> https://wiki.internet2.edu/confluence/display/GrouperWG/Grouper+-+Web+Services
>
> I understand why HTML wants GET/POST to be for different things,  
> (GET should be idempotent), and browsers do the back button  
> differently for GET and POST.  But Im not sure why REST cares what  
> HTTP method is used... If REST uses a post, then you cant make a  
> link to it, must be a form.  That's fine, but if you use PUT and  
> DELETE, you cant use it with browsers, even with forms (right?)

You can't fully utilize a RESTful interface with a plain browser,  
which is fine, since that's not the intent of REST.  REST is for  
service to service communication, not browser+HTML to service (but  
browser+HTML+JavaScript with a conforming XMLHttpRequest  
implementation can be RESTful - see http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest/#dependencies) 
.

> Anyways, I don't think we need to worry about it since Axis/HTML  
> doesn't support them PUT and DELETE...

Then Axis/HTML is an incredibly poor choice for a RESTful  
implementation.  That's like saying it's OK to use a SQL database  
implementation that doesn't support INSERT or DELETE, but that some  
syntax for SELECT achieves the same result.

  Scotty