Re: How to create Rest APIs for non-JCR data in Sling 8??

[Ben Fortuna]

Hi Jason,

Possibly I approached it from the wrong angle in my assessment, happy to
hear it's been working for you and others. I may try again for APIs in
future.

That aside, after using sling for serving web content I can't recommend it
enough. For me it certainly puts the fun back in web development.

Regards,
Ben

On 30 Jan 2017 6:32 AM, "Jason E Bailey"  wrote:

> I'm not sure how to correctly convey my confusion over your statement :)
> There may be some bias here, since I've been doing this for a while, but
> this is an incredibly easy platform for REST and I haven't ran across
> another that gives me the same flexibility.
>
> --
> Jason
>
> On Sat, Jan 28, 2017, at 05:27 PM, Ben Fortuna wrote:
> > Hi Henry,
> >
> > I agree with what you say about keeping it simple and using a servlet.
> > However there are many frameworks and platforms today geared towards
> > making
> > it easier to implement REST APIs, and I think non-trivial APIs would
> > probably benefit from using one.
> >
> > As such, to me an API should live outside the Sling process and use sling
> > as a data/content source.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Ben
> >
>
>

Re: How to create Rest APIs for non-JCR data in Sling 8??

[Jason E Bailey]

I'm not sure how to correctly convey my confusion over your statement :)
There may be some bias here, since I've been doing this for a while, but
this is an incredibly easy platform for REST and I haven't ran across
another that gives me the same flexibility.

--
Jason

On Sat, Jan 28, 2017, at 05:27 PM, Ben Fortuna wrote:
> Hi Henry,
> 
> I agree with what you say about keeping it simple and using a servlet.
> However there are many frameworks and platforms today geared towards
> making
> it easier to implement REST APIs, and I think non-trivial APIs would
> probably benefit from using one.
> 
> As such, to me an API should live outside the Sling process and use sling
> as a data/content source.
> 
> Regards,
> Ben
> 

Re: How to create Rest APIs for non-JCR data in Sling 8??

[Jason E Bailey]

In general I agree with you, that's the simplest 

OP had a dual need. which is storing information about the asset in the
JCR at the same time, which I don't see how your solution handles.

--
Jason

On Sat, Jan 28, 2017, at 02:08 PM, Henry Saginor wrote:
> In my opinion Sling is first and foremost a REST framework specifically
> designed for this kind of thing. It’s not only to serve JCR content.
> The paradigm Steven described earlier in this thread is EXACTLY the way
> to implement it. In the Sling world the resource IS the RESTful object
> addressable via a URI. The only thing I can add, as I wrote before, is
> that it’s not necessary to implement a custom resource provider.
> You can simply create JCR nodes/resources to map to your resource type
> via sling:resourceType. And what your servlet returns is up to you and
> your requirements. That works in most cases. 
> You can easily integrate your servlet with existing OSGi service via
> declarative services and use any framework/library you need internally
> (provided you can make it available in OSGi container) to integrate with
> your data where it adds value.
> But in my opinion it does not make sense integrating Sling with other
> framework, such as Spring, which follow different paradigms to do the
> same things as Sling + Declarative Services. It increases complexity and
> does not add value.
> 
> My advice is don’t shoot yourself in the foot and keep things as simple
> as possible. Just implement a servlet, integrate with existing service
> via DS if needed, and format and return the response based on your
> requirements. Then create a resource (JCR or custom ResourceProvider),
> map it to your servlet via sling:resourceType. This is how I have always
> implemented RESTful services in Sling without many limitations. The
> framework is specifically designed for this.
> 
> Henry  
>  
> > On Jan 28, 2017, at 7:57 AM, Jason E Bailey  wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Its my understanding that the question on ACL's depends on where it is
> > inheriting the ACL from. Taking your code as literal, you've declared
> > that you own everything under /things and it would inherit the ACL of /.
> > So if you put your ROOT as /content/remote/things You could set JCR ACLs
> > on /content/remote.

Re: How to create Rest APIs for non-JCR data in Sling 8??

[Ben Fortuna]

Hi Roy,

Yes my reference to data/content was based on the OP stating he'll be
storing data in JCR, so effectively yes he probably could just use a JCR
repo backend.

I'm not totally discounting Sling as an API platform, just that it probably
won't integrate easily with other API frameworks (e.g. JAX-RS, Spring,
etc.). Also if the API is serving more than JCR "resources" (i.e. some form
of data processing) then it will probably need to use servlets. A lot of
maybes I guess. ;-)

regards,
ben


On 29 January 2017 at 09:32, Roy Teeuwen  wrote:

> Hey Ben,
>
> I have to argue you on that one though. The short definition of Apache
> Sling from the main site, definitely look at point 1:
>
> Apache Sling in five bullets points
>
> • REST based web framework
> • Content-driven, using a JCR content repository
> • Powered by OSGi
> • Scripting inside, multiple languages (JSP, server-side
> javascript, Scala, etc.)
> • Apache Open Source project
>
> Talking about sling as only data/content is just addressing the JCR /
> Apache OAK part of Sling, then you can just as well say, drop sling and
> just use oak to store the data/content
>
> Greets
> Roy
>
> > On 28 Jan 2017, at 23:27, Ben Fortuna  wrote:
> >
> > Hi Henry,
> >
> > I agree with what you say about keeping it simple and using a servlet.
> > However there are many frameworks and platforms today geared towards
> making
> > it easier to implement REST APIs, and I think non-trivial APIs would
> > probably benefit from using one.
> >
> > As such, to me an API should live outside the Sling process and use sling
> > as a data/content source.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Ben
> >
> > On 29 Jan 2017 6:09 AM, "Henry Saginor" 
> wrote:
> >
> >> In my opinion Sling is first and foremost a REST framework specifically
> >> designed for this kind of thing. It’s not only to serve JCR content.
> >> The paradigm Steven described earlier in this thread is EXACTLY the way
> to
> >> implement it. In the Sling world the resource IS the RESTful object
> >> addressable via a URI. The only thing I can add, as I wrote before, is
> that
> >> it’s not necessary to implement a custom resource provider.
> >> You can simply create JCR nodes/resources to map to your resource type
> via
> >> sling:resourceType. And what your servlet returns is up to you and your
> >> requirements. That works in most cases.
> >> You can easily integrate your servlet with existing OSGi service via
> >> declarative services and use any framework/library you need internally
> >> (provided you can make it available in OSGi container) to integrate with
> >> your data where it adds value.
> >> But in my opinion it does not make sense integrating Sling with other
> >> framework, such as Spring, which follow different paradigms to do the
> same
> >> things as Sling + Declarative Services. It increases complexity and does
> >> not add value.
> >>
> >> My advice is don’t shoot yourself in the foot and keep things as simple
> as
> >> possible. Just implement a servlet, integrate with existing service via
> DS
> >> if needed, and format and return the response based on your
> requirements.
> >> Then create a resource (JCR or custom ResourceProvider), map it to your
> >> servlet via sling:resourceType. This is how I have always implemented
> >> RESTful services in Sling without many limitations. The framework is
> >> specifically designed for this.
> >>
> >> Henry
> >>
> >>> On Jan 28, 2017, at 7:57 AM, Jason E Bailey 
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Its my understanding that the question on ACL's depends on where it is
> >>> inheriting the ACL from. Taking your code as literal, you've declared
> >>> that you own everything under /things and it would inherit the ACL of
> /.
> >>> So if you put your ROOT as /content/remote/things You could set JCR
> ACLs
> >>> on /content/remote.
> >>>
> >>> Theoretically I assume that your resource could provide an ACL as the
> >>> ACL is just a resource in the tree.
> >> I am not sure if you can do this since ACLs are at JCR level and are
> >> checked via JCR.
> >>>
> >>> As others suggested using a resource provider in this way may not be
> the
> >>> best solution. As the whole point of Sling is to manage content and
> >>> splitting it into different pieces can be awkward.
> >>>
> >>> I'm assuming that you don't need to do POST operations, and that using
> >>> Oak with an S3 file storage configuration is out.
> >>>
> >>> If you can tell Sling what's on the remote store, you could just use a
> >>> reference to the data. In the same way that in AEM, an image component
> >>> doesn't necessarily have the image, rather it can have a pointer to the
> >>> image.  So your renderer can just go out and retrieve the image and
> >>> return it.
> >>>
> >>> Or, the Sling Resource Merger
> >>> https://sling.apache.org/documentation/bundles/resource-merger.html
> >>>
> >>> In this